Sleeping Beauty

Based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault, Sleeping Beauty tells the tale of a young Princess, Aurora.


On the day of her birth to King Stefan and his Queen, a holiday is declared, that all may pay homage to the infant princess Aurora. The Princess is betrothed to the young prince Phillip, son of King Hubert of the neighboring kingdom. The young Princess is visited at her celebration by a trio of kind but bumbling fairies, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, who grant the child ethereal beauty and a melodious singing voice. Unfortunately, an interloper, the evil witch Maleficent, interrupts the blessing and places a harrowing curse upon the child; that she should die by pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel before sundown on her 16th birthday. In an effort to mitigate this terrible curse, Merryweather bestows her gift upon the child and casts a spell that will allow Princess Aurora to wake from that eternal sleep by a kiss from her One True Love. King Stefan, still fearing for his daughter, orders that every spinning wheel in the kingdom be destroyed. The three fairies then decide that with the King’s blessing, they will bring the infant princess to their secluded cottage in the forest, to protect her from the evil Maleficent and raise the child as their own, posing as her human aunts and calling her “Briar Rose”.

As the young Princess grows, she blossoms into a beautiful but lonely young woman unaware of her royal heritage. On the day of her 16th birthday, Briar Rose is sent off to pick berries, so that her “aunts” can prepare for her birthday party, making a dress and baking a cake. While in the woods with her animal friends, Briar Rose sings a song and wishes desperately to find her true love.


She makes the acquaintance of a handsome young man passing through the forest. Enamored by the young woman’s beautiful singing voice, the young man is actually Prince Phillip, and though neither of them realize who the other actually is, it’s love at first sight. When the Prince asks the girl her name, she panics and rushes back to the cottage, telling him that they can meet that night.

Upon returning home, Briar Rose tells her aunts about the young man she met in the woods. The fairies then reveal to her the truth about her royal blood, her betrothal and her true name, telling her that she will be returned to her parent’s palace that evening. Saddened that she will never see her beloved again, she runs crying to her room.

Meanwhile, King Stefan and King Hubert prepare for Aurora’s return and her marriage to Prince Phillip, who rushes into the palace and tells his father that he has met his true love in the forest. Leaving the shocked King Hubert to wonder how he will break the bad news to King Stefan, Prince Phillip gallops back to the cottage in the glen.

Upon returning to her parents palace, Aurora sadly realizes that as a princess, her duty is to sacrifice her feelings of true love and marry Prince Phillip, though he is a stranger. However, before she can discover that the young man she loves and Prince Phillip are one and the same, Princess Aurora is lured to a vacant upstairs chamber in her father’s palace and under Maleficent’s enchantment, touches the spindle of a cursed spinning wheel, pricking her finger and fulfilling the sorceress’s evil curse.

As the palace awaits the return of Princess Aurora, the trio of fairies, in an effort to spare the kingdom the shock of having lost its princess, cast a sleeping spell over the entire kingdom until the young Aurora can be awoken by true love’s kiss. Learning that the young man Aurora met in the forest is Prince Phillip, the fairies rush back to the cottage to intercept him and bring him to the palace.


However, the young Prince is captured by Maleficent’s minions when he arrives at the cottage, and is brought to her castle in the Forbidden Mountains in an effort to prevent him from undoing her evil curse. Discovering that they are too late, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather fly quickly to Maleficent’s castle and free the Prince from his dungeon. They bestow upon him the enchanted Sword of Truth and Shield of Virtue, with which the young Prince must battle the sorceress’s henchmen and evil spells, even hacking through a forest of giant brambles that surround King Stefan’s castle.

In a climactic finale, Prince Phillip battles the evil Maleficent herself when she transforms herself into an enormous, fire-breathing dragon. The Prince prevails and destroys the dragon, plunging the sword into her heart and killing Maleficent.

Aurora, still trapped in her eternal slumber, is finally awoken by a kiss from the Prince. The curse is broken, and the sleeping kingdom awakes as both Aurora and Phillip realize that each of them is the other’s true love. They descend the staircase together, and head to the ballroom to be reunited with their families. The film ends as they dance a waltz as the kingdom rejoices.

Taking nearly a decade to complete, Sleeping Beauty was the last Disney film to use hand-inked cels, and the last fairy tale produced by Walt Disney himself. The studio returned to the fairy tale genre in 1989 with the Little Mermaid.