Review: "Sleeping Beauty" Not an Exceptional Disney Animated Feature

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 47 (of 2014) by Leroy Douresseaux

Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Running time:  75 minutes (1 hour, 15 minutes)
DIRECTOR:  Clyde Geronimi (supervising director), Les Clark, Eric Larson, and Wolfgang Reitherman,
WRITERS:  Erdman Penner (story adaptation) with additional story by Joe Rinaldi, Winston Hibler, Bill Peet, Ted Sears, Ralph Wright, and Milt Banta (based on “La Belle au bois dormant” by Charles Perrault, “The Sleeping Beauty” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and “Little Briar Rose” by The Brothers Grimm)
PRODUCER:  Walt Disney
EDITORS:  Roy M. Brewer Jr. and Donald Halliday
Academy Award nominee

ANIMATION/FANTASY/FAMILY with elements of comedy   

Starring:  (voices) Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson

Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 animated musical fantasy film from Walt Disney Productions.  It is the 16th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, but it was the last animated Disney film based on a fairy tale until The Little Mermaid in 1989.

Sleeping Beauty is based on two similar fairy tales:  “La Belle au bois dormant” by Charles Perrault and “Little Briar Rose” by The Brothers Grimm.  The film also features adaptations and arrangements of musical numbers from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1890 ballet, The Sleeping Beauty.  In Disney's Sleeping Beauty, three good fairies protect a princess from a malevolent fairy who placed a curse on her when she was an infant.

Sleeping Beauty opens in the 14th century in an unnamed kingdom, where King Stephan (Taylor Holmes) and the Queen (Verna Felton) have been childless for years.  Then, they welcome the birth of a daughter, Aurora, and they proclaim a holiday so that their subjects can celebrate her birth.  At that celebration, the infant Aurora is betrothed to young Prince Phillip, the son King Hubert (Bill Thompson).  Three fairies:  Flora (Verna Felton), Fauna (Barbara Luddy), and Merryweather (Barbara Jo Allen) arrive to bless the child with gifts.

However, an welcomed visitor, the evil fairy queen, Maleficent (Eleanor Audley), arrives, furious that she has been snubbed by King Stephan and Queen Leah (who is only called “the Queen” in the film).  So she places a curse on baby Aurora that will killer her on her 16th birthday.  However, the fairies are able to temper the curse, and later, they spirit the child away in order to protect her.  Sixteen years later, Aurora, now named “Briar Rose” (Mary Costa), meets a handsome young man (Bill Shirley) and falls in love with him, while unaware of the death curse hanging over her sixteenth birthday.

Sleeping Beauty is not one of Walt Disney's better animated feature films, but it features one of Disney's most memorable villains, Maleficent, a classic animated character because of her unique look.  In fact, the overall look of Sleeping Beauty is something that makes it stand out, in large measure because of the work of Disney production designer regular, Ken Anderson, and Disney artist, Eyvind Earle, who was Sleeping Beauty's color stylist and chief background designer.  Chuck Jones, the legendary Looney Tunes and Warner Bros. Pictures animation director, was a layout artist for Sleeping Beauty, but did not receive a credit in the film.  The musical score and the songs in the film are also a hallmark of this film and are also Disney musical favorites.

Another thing about Sleeping Beauty is that it is also a bit irregular as fantasy films go.  People may remember it as a fairy tale romance with its happily-ever-after ending about a Disney princess finding her prince.  However, Sleeping Beauty is also a comic fantasy with a generous amount of humor, some of it involving even Maleficent.  Sleeping Beauty is an oddity in the Disney animated feature film pantheon, but there are reasons to remember it.  Like most Disney films, those reasons are why it is shared from one generation to the next.

7 of 10
B+

Wednesday, October 29, 2014


NOTES:
1960 Academy Awards, USA:  1 nomination: “Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture” (George Bruns)

The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Review: Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead Play to Type in "The Bat" (Happy B'day, Anges Moorehead)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 110 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Bat (1959) – B&W
Running time:  80 minutes (1 hour, 20 minutes)
DIRECTOR:  Crane Wilbur
WRITER:  Crane Wilbur – screenplay and screen story (based upon the play by Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Reinhart)
PRODUCER:  C.J. Tevlin
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Joseph Biroc
EDITOR:  William Austin
COMPOSER:  Louis Forbes

MYSTERY/THRILLER with elements of horror

Starring:  Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead, Gavin Gordon, John Sutton, Lenita Lane, Elaine Edwards, Darla Hood, John Bryant, Harvey Stephens, Robert B. Williams, Mike Steele, and Riza Royce

The subject of this movie review is The Bat, a 1959 mystery-thriller starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorhead.  The film is based on the 1920 Broadway play, The Bat, by Avery Hopwood and Mary Roberts Reinhart.  The play was adapted as a motion picture three times:  in 1926 as The Bat, in 1930 as The Bat Whispers, and again in 1959 as The Bat (the subject of this review).  The 1959 movie version focuses on a crazed killer, known as “The Bat,” who is on the loose in a mansion full of people.

Best-selling mystery author, Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorehead, best known as “Endora,” the spiteful mother-in-law on the TV series, “Bewitched”), and her staff are summering at The Oaks, a fine estate near the small town of Zenith.  It is at The Oaks where Cornelia finds that she can write her hugely successful murder mysteries.  This summer, however, the locals are falling dead, and a mysterious, possible supernatural, killer known as The Bat is on the loose.

After The Oaks’ owner, John Fleming (Harvey Stephens), who also owns the local bank, dies, suspicions about the whereabouts of one million dollars in missing money from the bank, land squarely on The Oaks.  Soon, a bevy of townsfolk including the local coroner, Dr. Malcolm Wells (Vincent Price), Fleming’s nephew, Mark (John Bryant), the local law official, Lt. Andy Anderson (Gavin Gordon), and more are hanging around the mansion looking for the loot – with the threat of gruesome death at the hands (and claws) of The Bat hovering over them.

The Bat is one of those “spooky old house thrillers,” and is based upon a novel and play that was apparently very popular in the 1920 and 30’s.  This was the third film version of the story (the first was a silent film), and by 1959, this sub-genre of mystery films must have seemed quaint.  In fact, scary stories – the kind that take place in creaky old house riddled with secret passage ways where lies hidden money that is in turned hunted for by a masked villain – was soon to be (if not by the time of this movie’s release) children’s fare.  This is pretty much the template for most “Scooby-Doo” cartoons and other Hanna-Barbera cartoons like it.  Still, it’s very entertaining, and Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead play to type.  This is a nice treat for the genre it represents.  In fact, The Bat holds the identity of its villain to the very end surprisingly well.

6 of 10
B

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Updated:  Friday, December 06, 2013

The text is copyright © 2013 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Review: 1959 "Imitation of Life" is a Douglas Sirk Classic

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 19 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Imitation of Life (1959)
Running time: 125 minutes
DIRECTOR: Douglas Sirk
WRITERS: Eleanora Griffin and Allan Scott (based upon the novel of the same name by Fannie Hurst)
PRODUCER: Ross Hunter
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Russell Metty
EDITOR: Milton Carruth

DRAMA/ROMANCE

Starring: Lana Turner, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Robert Alda, Susan Kohner, Dan O’Herlihy Juanita Moore, Karin Dicker, Terry Burnham, and Troy Donahue

With the release of the film Far From Heaven (2002), influenced by the work of director Douglas Sirk, perhaps, more people will take a look at his work, especially Sirk’s classic, quasi-campy, Imitation of Life. The high soap opera drama was the second film version of Fannie Hurst’s novel of the same title.

The film begins in 1947 when a struggling actress, Lora Meredith (Lana Turner, Peyton Place), and her six-year old daughter, Susie (Terry Burnham), meet a “colored” woman, Annie (Juanita Moore, who by 1947 was a veteran of several film roles for which she had not received screen credit) and her eight-year old daughter, Sarah (Karin Dicker), who is light-skinned/white (high, high-yellow) like her absent apparently Caucasian father and not like her darkie mother.

The film quickly moves to 1958 when Lora is a well-established Broadway star and the muse of her playwright boyfriend David Edwards (Dan O’Herlihy), but she isn’t happy. Lora hardly sees now sixteen year-old Susie (Sandra Dee, Gidget), and she struggles to find time for the man she loves, advertising man/frustrated photographer, MoMA wannabee Steve Archer (John Gavin). Lora, self-absorbed with her career, fails to realize that Susie is also smitten with Steve.

Meanwhile, Anne’s relationship with her daughter, 18 year-old Sarah (Susan Kohner), is rocky. Sarah is ashamed of her mother because Sarah can pass for white, but the only thing that shatters that illusion and reveals her to be a light-skinned negress is her mother’s dark skin. Sarah hates it when her mother shows up unannounced when Sarah’s white friends are around and embarrasses her.

Imitation of Life has so many melodramatic subplots that it flies all over the place. Will Steve and Lora hook up; will mother and daughter (both pairs) make up; why can’t Sarah be proud of her race; and what’s wrong with Annie’s health? Still, it’s fun to watch this remnant of the old studio system of Hollywood filmmaking and as part of Sirk’s filmography. It’s a Technicolor and melodramatic wallop upside the head – equally parts hilarious and heartbreaking, absurd and real, and archaic and relevant.

The acting is over the top, but there are moments of genuine clarity and art. The bombastic elements usually overwhelm the quality moments in the film, but it is still worth seeing. It’s just such an enjoyable film, whether you laugh or cry, both, or one more than the other.

The best plot line of this film (and it is blessed, but mostly cursed with many) is the mother/daughter relationship between Annie and Sarah. Why is it wrong for Sarah to pass as white? Why does she have to be black? If this issue is merely skin color, she is white, but ethnic/racial/genetic issues that define any black ancestry as a taint foils her. Why can’t she be who she is and who and what is she? Why does she have to accept the second-class status that goes with being black and stands in the way of material success and happiness? Should she deny who and what she is to get material things or a better social station in life?

Sarah’s often like a child looking through a storefront window at what everyone but she can have. The racial issues in Imitation of Life are a movie by themselves. The rest of the story elements are pedestrian fare, but Sarah’s dilemma, which would even today be explosive, was all the more so in the late 1950’s. Sarah’s story adds flavor to the crazy stew that is Imitation of Life.

It’s often hard to say why this film is so appealing. It’s structure as a film is faulty, and there are too many subplots, even for a two-hour film. But see it for yourself. Once you do, you can’t help but return for second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on helpings.

7 of 10
A-

NOTES:
1960 Academy Awards: 2 nominations for “Best Supporting Actress” (Susan Kohner, Juanita Moore)
1960 Golden Globes: 1 win for “Best Supporting Actress” (Kohner) and 1 nomination for “Best Supporting Actress” (Moore)

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