Sleeping Beauty

Maleficent retells Disney's own 1959 film from the antagonist's side, and it is specifically that film rather than the tale: the character does not exist in Perrault, the name is Disney's, and the horned silhouette being reused is Marc Davis's design. The retelling inverts the source at its central points. The curse is given a motive the 1959 film does not supply, the three good fairies become incompetent rather than protective, and the kiss that breaks the spell is not the prince's. It is a reading of the earlier film, which is why it only works if you already know it.

Disney's film is scored from Tchaikovsky's ballet, not merely in its spirit: George Bruns adapted the 1890 music directly, and the songs are set to ballet themes. Once Upon a Dream is the Garland Waltz with lyrics written over it. The borrowing shaped how the film looks as well. It was made in Technirama 70 with flat, angular backgrounds by Eyvind Earle that read as stage design rather than as illustration, which is a deliberate fit to the score. The tale itself is Perrault's; the version Disney put on screen is Tchaikovsky's.

Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant supplies the christening, the slighted fairy, the curse fixed to a spindle and the hundred years of sleep. Disney stops where Perrault's first half stops and drops his second, in which the prince's ogress mother tries to eat the children. The film's score is built on Tchaikovsky's ballet of the same tale rather than on the text.