Sleeping Beauty Blu Ray vs 35mm
The Blu ray is on the left, the 35mm is on the right.
With Alice in Wonderland just being released in 4k, I wanted to see what Sleeping beauty could possibly look like when it eventually gets restored.
I found a 35mm scan of the film online, and I just took screenshots to compare it with the current blu ray. With the restorations of Cinderella, Alice and Snow White, I do notice that all of the blu rays end up looking quite saturated in comparison, and that many times, the colors are so bright they end up looking like neon. Sleeping Beauty is no exception. A great example here is the green bird in the first picture and Maleficent's fire, which is a very bright green on the blu ray, but more yellow on the 35mm.
The 35mm has much deeper contrasts and shadows, which makes certain scenes like Maleficent holding the candle and Aurora sleeping, look so much better. It also has much MUCH deeper and richer shades of blue and red, which I think look absolutely stunning. The whole film has a more blueish tone, very similar to the new 4k restoration of Alice in Wonderland.
The blu ray completely scrubbed the grain, and the linework although not scrubbed into oblivion like the Cinderella blu ray, is not as firm and full as in the 35mm. Although the linework in dark areas gets lost in the 35mm. That's something that wouldn't happen with an actual restoration.
The biggest color differences come from Aurora's hair, which the blu ray makes way too light in some parts, Maleficent's skin which looks light blue many times, Fauna's dress which always looks way too bright and the drunk guy whose clothes is brown on the blu ray but green on the 35mm.
Overall, the blu ray, along with other disney classics on the format, make the films look like an animation from the 90's or 2000's, instead of the animated technicolor films from the 50's that they are. Thankfully, the 4k restorations are bringing back the grain and colors, and I think this 35mm gives us a pretty good look into what a 4k restoration of Sleeping Beauty would look like. I recommend opening the pictures in another tab and zooming in to really appreciate the beautiful grain and the colors of the 35mm. (Although it looks like reddit heavily compressed the images, even tho they're just 3mb each 😞)
EDIT:
I uploaded the images to another site since reddit severely compressed them. In this link you can see them in much better quality plus 20 more frame comparisons I did https://ibb.co/album/qMMbr3