Sleeping Beauty: the uniqueness of her beauty

There were many films that stood out to me in this very fascinating unit learning about fairytales. If I had to pick one that particularly stood out to me it would be Sleeping Beauty. The original movie was made in 1959 and the directors of the movie were Clyde Geronimi, Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson and Les Clark. The film was animated which in my opinion I like a lot better than it being with real people. You can get a better picture of what they are trying to portray in the story. The imagery in this film was very creative as most of the colors were very bright and happy. Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) is always dressed in a nice blue dress that really brings out the colors in her eyes. All the fairy godmothers have similar colors that are happy. Maleficent who is the antagonist in the story is dressed fully in black with bright green beaming from her face. You realized right away that she was dangerous and bad due to the color she was wearing and how she presented herself. The three fairy godmothers have taken care of Sleeping Beauty since she was a baby to protect her from Maleficent, who put a spell on her when she was born that she would prick her finger on the spinning wheel on her sixteenth birthday and die. Her birthday is soon approaching as the fairy mothers are becoming extremely nervous and scared of what the evil Maleficent is going to do. As soon as her sixteenth birthday hits she goes into a deep sleep and the only way for her to wake up is by true love’s kiss.

Her beauty is really what makes her stand out. Her long blonde hair and her long blue dress attracted a young prince who was drawn to her by her beauty. If she wasn’t pretty would the prince still fall for her? That is always a thought if that is true. The way she presents herself shows that she is confident which is another reason the prince is drawn to her as well. In the movie she really is the only beauty as they make all the other characters look different from her. If it was reversed the story would have a completely different meaning.

The book Sleeping Beauty was written by Brother Grimm but was first published by Charles Perrault which was called “ La Belle au bois dormant.” The book is pretty similar to the movie as it is just in a movie form. When reading this book it was almost like I was in the movie because of how similar the plots are to one another. You can really picture what everyone looks like because of watching the movie. There were some differences in the book that did not appear in the movie. For instance in the movie she is sixteen when she is supposed to prick her finger on the needle and in the book it says she is fifteen. It also was never said in the movie that she would be asleep for one-hundred years then be woken up by a true love’s kiss. In the book Maleficient is downplayed at not being as evil in the movie. I think the reason is the book is for more younger children and they don’t want them to be as scared. But in the book Maleficient looks a lot more scary than she does in the movie and I think that is because the way she is drawn which gives more of a scary effect. Everything seemed to happen in the same order in the book as it did in the movie. Since it was written such a long time ago the movie wanted to portray how the book exactly was. In my opinion I think it is important for the book and movie to be different in ways. They both need to have their own uniqueness, because it is interesting to see how they are different from one another.