Sleeping Beauty on DVD

Disney’s 1959 masterpiece is looking a little long in the tooth, thanks mostly to the onward rush of technology, but it’s still an excellent DVD of a delightful fairy tale that deserves to be in every family’s library.

Walt Disney, like George Lucas, was a guy who tried to push the state of the art. His Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for example, was the first full length animated feature - and a huge hit. Fantasia was an experiment in multi-channel sound and blending animation with classical music.

And Sleeping Beauty was an attempt to apply state of the art movie technology to animation - specifically stereo sound and, even more important, the use of widescreen 70mm film stock to present the best image possible.

And it works. Sleeping Beauty is a beautiful movie and the Special Edition DVD is a beautiful DVD.

Yes, it does look a tad long in the tooth, but you can’t blame this classic for that. The attention to detail in the production shows. The (anamorphic) widescreen is gorgeous, the backgrounds are detailed, textured, and colorful, the audio quality is probably as good as you can get from this vintage of film.

But if you hold it up next to Disney’s Tarzan, for example, its age shows. Sleeping Beauty’s color palette is limited compared to Tarzan’s computerized “millions of shades;” camera angles are more limited than is now possible with computers - and the difference between 1950’s recording techniques and Tarzan’s 1990’s state-of-the-art digital recording is the difference between night and day.

That said, "If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage;" it takes more than technology to make a true classic. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is more than just a glorious look at the state of tradition animation some forty-odd years ago: it’s a marvelous fairy tale that can be enjoyed by all members of the family. It has good versus evil, adventure, romance, and nothing that’ll get the kids asking embarrassing questions of Mom and Dad unless it's something like "How can they fall in love so quickly?"

In short, it’s Disney classic animation at its best. And the fact that it bases its musical score on the beautiful Tchaikovsky work enhances the enjoyment.

Princess Aurora, the beautiful child destined to sleep, is newly born and her father betroths her to the neighboring kingdom’s young Prince Phillip to cement the bond between the two kingdoms. And at Aurora’s public presentation, admirers from all over come to pay tribute and give gifts.

Except that, by device or through oversight, the evil witch Maleficent wasn't invited - and she's a tad put out. She casts a spell deeming that, before sunset on her 16th birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel spindle and die.

This would throw a serious monkey wrench into our desired happily-ever-after ending - but fortunately there’s a trio of well-meaning but ultimately oafish fairies named Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather who whisk to the rescue. They change the spell so that Aurora will only fall asleep until “love’s kiss” awakens her - and take her away to live with them in secret so they can keep her safe from Maleficent’s mischief.

Fortunately, most of the story takes place before the beauty sleeps, otherwise there’d be a distinct lack of action! Instead, the narrative follows the three good fairies as they prepare for Aurora’s fateful birthday, Aurora cavorting in the forest with typically Disney critters - and her ultimate meeting and falling for the good Prince Phillip, neither of whom knows who the other really is.

But of course the beauty does sleep, leaving the three fairies and Phillip to rescue her in the final third of the flick. They have a mighty battle with Maleficent, who in the climactic segment transforms herself into a fearsome dragon in a scene that looks really good on a big screen.

There’s also a nifty, though very short, scene in Malificent's castle, where her creatures of hench perform a macabre dance that’s a visual treat to behold.

Okay, so shoot us. We still enjoyed it a lot.

And, as is typical with the Disney studio, they’ve given us a truly gorgeous DVD that does the classic movie justice. The movie is presented in a THX-certified version that includes both anamorphic widescreen (16x9 TV compatible) and Pan&Scan versions (but watch the widescreen one lest you lose nearly half the beautiful images' width). Video quality is superb, as rich and as detailed as possible.

Likewise, audio is billed as Dolby Digital 5.1 and while it’s really limited to the front, the stereo separation of the music and the dialogue is excellent and is probably as good as could be hoped for from an analog-recorded soundtrack that’s this old.

Then, of course are the extras - as usual, an entire second disc’s worth.

Disc one includes a running commentary track with “Aurora” and a variety of crew and/or Disney people - though it’s only available on the widescreen version (which works for us!). There’s also the usual selection of trailers and the THX Optimizer that can help you set up your TV properly.

Disc two has piles of stuff, including a quite extensive “Making of” series of featurettes. There’s also a wonderful addition: Disney’s Oscar-winning short “Grand Canyon,” a live action look at the big hole featuring spectacular vistas accompanied by Ferde Grofe’s “Grand Canyon Suite.”

Alas, this feature (in fact, most if not all of the extras) is not anamorphic, so owners of 16x9 TV’s will have to zoom the letterboxed image to fill the screen, which tends to make the image look kind of like you’re watching through a screen door. We’d have loved to see this feature given the same THX treatment as the main feature.

You also get two other great shorts, Four Artists Paint One Tree - a vintage special hosted by Walt Disney - and "The Peter Tchaikovsky Story," a 1959 vintage show from the "Disneyland" TV series.

There’s also info on the film’s design, music, the restoration, and widescreen vs. Pan&Scan comparisons that’ll have you running to your local electronics store to see what all this talk about anamorphic DVD’s is about.

They’ve also included the type of kiddie games that are so common with Disney DVD’s. We suppose the ankle biters’ll like them, though we just skipped through them and went back to the meaty stuff - of which there’s plenty.

We love these excellent DVD releases of Disney classics and look forward to experiencing many more of them.

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