Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Distributor: Buena Vista Film Distribution
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
At the christening of Princess Aurora, the evil fairy Maleficent, offended at not being invited, curses the baby: before sunset on her sixteenth birthday she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die. One of the three good fairies, Merryweather, softens the curse to a deep sleep broken only by true love's kiss. The king burns every spinning wheel in the land, and the fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, hide Aurora in a woodland cottage as a peasant girl, Briar Rose. On her sixteenth birthday she meets a young man in the forest, Prince Phillip, to whom she was betrothed as a baby, though neither knows it. That evening the fairies take her back to the castle, where Maleficent lures her to a spinning wheel and she falls into the enchanted sleep; the fairies put the whole kingdom to sleep with her. Maleficent captures Phillip, but the fairies free him and arm him with the Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue. He fights through a forest of thorns, and Maleficent transforms into a huge black dragon. Phillip kills her with the sword, wakes Aurora with a kiss, and the kingdom wakes to celebrate.
Why It Matters
- Eyvind Earle's design, inspired by medieval tapestries and pre-Renaissance painting, gives every frame a flat, richly patterned, vertical stylisation unlike any other Disney film, and Maleficent's transformation into the dragon, in green fire, is one of the studio's great climaxes. Tchaikovsky's ballet score, adapted by George Bruns, carries the whole film.
- Nearly a decade in the making and costing $6 million, it was Disney's most expensive animated film and the first shot in Super Technirama 70 widescreen. It lost money on release, leading to layoffs and to the cheaper xerographic process of One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but it is now one of Disney's most admired films and was added to the National Film Registry in 2019.
Notes and Trivia
- It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture.
- Maleficent later became the subject of two live-action films starring Angelina Jolie (2014, 2019).
- See also: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).