“In a far away land, long ago,” says the storybook, a daughter is born to a king and queen, which they name Aurora. The kingdom assembles for her christening, at which time the infant princess is betrothed to the young Prince Philip. Three fairies, Flora (dressed in pink), Fauna (in green) and Merryweather (in blue) arrive to present Aurora with blessings.

Flora gives Aurora the gift of beauty. Fauna, the gift of song. As Merryweather is about to present her gift, the sorceress Maleficent, mistress of all evil, appears in a flash of lightning and green mist. Upset over not being invited to the ceremony, she places a curse on Aurora: before her sixteenth birthday, the princess will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die.

Merryweather uses her blessing to modify the curse; Aurora will not die if her finger meets the spindle, instead, she’ll fall to sleep, until she’s awakened by her true love’s kiss. Not taking any chances, Flora decides to raise Aurora until her sixteenth birthday. The fairies will live as mortals in order to escape Maleficent’s watchful eye.

Aurora grows up in a wooded cottage with the fairies, who she believes are her aunts. Out picking berries with her animal friends, Aurora’s singing voice attracts the attention of Prince Philip. They instantly fall in love. On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, the fairies tell Aurora who she really is, and break the news that her marriage has already been arranged.

The fairies escort the princess back to the castle, where Maleficent lures Aurora to her fateful encounter with a spinning wheel. She falls to sleep. The fairies realize the boy Aurora met in the woods was Prince Philip, and that only he can lift the curse. Captured by Maleficent and taken to her lair in the Forbidden Mountains, Philip is rescued by the fairies and has to combat Maleficent in order to save the princess.

Directed by Les Clark, Eric Larson and Wolfgang Reitherman under the supervision of Clyde Geronimi, and adapted by Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Winston Hibler, Bill Peet, Ted Sears, Ralph Wright and Milt Banta from the fairy tale by Charles Perrault, Sleeping Beauty was Walt Disney’s sixteenth animated feature.

Disney wanted the film to look different than any he’d made, so in addition to shooting in a widescreen aspect ratio he dubbed “Technirama 70,” Disney hired artist Eyvind Earle to design the film’s look. Earle’s graphic style was influenced by medieval art, so instead of the round features of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty was stylishly vertical or horizontal, like a pre-Renaissance painting.

he project took six years and $6 million to bring to the screen. It was the most lavish and expensive film Disney had ever attempted, and nearly bankrupted his studio. It was not a box office success in its original release, but is now recognized as one of the crowning achievements in animation, the last feature to be inked by hand before xerography was introduced.

In terms of art design, Sleeping Beauty is a masterpiece. This was the era of the epic – Ben Hur won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year – and this film, though only 75 minutes, belongs in that category. In addition to the striking design work, the human figures – animated by Marc Davis – flow across the screen more vividly than any animated film that came before.

There are sequences here that rank as the finest in the genre. As the fairies prepare a party for Aurora, Flora and Merryweather exchange barrages with their wands, transforming a dress from pink to blue and back again in an explosion of movement and color. Maleficent luring Aurora through the castle to her fate is eerie and memorable, while Philip’s escape from Maleficent’s lair is equally visceral.

Voiced by Eleanor Audley, Maleficent is as elegant and as merciless as screen villains get. Her presence is stronger than even the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. The work by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston animating the fairies is also top notch, as each sprite stands out with a distinct personality. I liked when Merryweather gets so mad at Maleficent’s raven, she chases it through the sky until she catches it and turns it to stone.

The mortals evoke no enthusiasm whatsoever. Aurora doesn’t even have dialogue in the last half of the picture, and Philip is helpless without the fairies, who carry the movie. The songs – adapted from Tchaikovsky’s “Sleeping Beauty” ballet – drag the pace, which was a charge leveled against the film in 1959. I could ignore that. The artistic pedigree and imagination displayed here are what stood out for me.