SCFZ poll: Wilfred Jackson

[flip]

Polling the films of director Wilfred Jackson

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half of the Jackson films you've seen, up to a maximum of 5. So if you've seen seven of his films, for example, you can list only a top 3. It's only if you've seen ten or more of his films than you can list the maximum of five.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Tuesday, in seven days, whatever day that is

- if anyone is watching films for these polls, then i'll extend the deadline up to three days, if someone requests an extension

- next poll: whoever posts the first ballot in this thread is free to nominate the director we poll next, unless you've nominated in this round already (everyone should get a chance). Already nominated this round: greg x, umbugbene, roscoe, bure, greennui, wba

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

one rule for nominees: at least 3 scfzers need to have seen 10+ of a nominee's films, or at least 4 scfzers need to have seen at least 8 of the nom's films, so if it isn't clear if that will be the case, we'll confirm that's true before moving forward

if 24 hours pass after a poll opens, and no one eligible to nominate has posted a ballot, then i'll nominate someone, and then we'll start over, and everyone will be able to nominate again

[Curtis, baby]

Seen lots as a young boy

Fantasia

[greennui]

14.

Mickey’s Garden
The Old Mill
The Band Concert
The Goddess of Spring
Peter Pan

[brian d]

seen at least 6, probably lots more

fantasia
peter pan
lady and the tramp

[Umbugbene]

Seen 23, all of them long ago. Dumbo's the only one I've rewatched in the last 10 years. I'm sure some of the shorts are worth including.

1. Fantasia
2. Dumbo
3. Alice in Wonderland

[Holymanm]

seen fantasia, 20 years ago... and dumbo was good, but is that really by him? did he like "do one of the sequences", like when a young hideaki anno handled one of the key sequences in nausicaa?

[...]

According to IMDb, he was a sequence director for Dumbo, Pinocchio, Saludos Amigos, and Snow White, did the Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria segment of Fantasia, the animated sequences in Song of the South and Melody Time, and is just listed as director for the rest, though sometimes as a shared credit, which isn't uncommon for animation.

[Holymanm]

yeah i saw him given an unimpressive-looking credit for dumbo on the wiki page... but is a (second-listed) sequence director a director? can we put that same one movie in the best-of polls for all of:

"Ben Sharpsteen
Norman Ferguson
Wilfred Jackson
Bill Roberts
Jack Kinney
Samuel Armstrong"

? just curious... and stirring shit because i don't know enough about cinema to opine on this fellow's actual movies

which isn't uncommon for animation

(duly noted, for sure... can make it tricky)

[...]

With sequence director, I suspect Jackson was essentially in charge of a segment of the movie, something like maybe the Pink Elephants scene in Dumbo, or the Pleasure Island scene in Pinocchio, but not the overall construction of the film. (I don't really know which segment's Jackson did actually work on, but those sorta seem up his alley judging from the shorts he made, as a guess.) I'd imagine there's some place online that has a more detailed breakdown of what he was in charge of, like the mention of him being responsible for the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in Fantasia, for the other features. But I haven't looked into it. To his credit, the Night on Bald Mountain bit is probably the best part of Fantasia, so that's something anyway.

Jackson's best liked shorts tend to be about processes and atmosphere, like the Father Noah, Santa's Workshop, Little Bunnies, Goddess of Spring, and so on, where we see groups preparing for something with "clever" animated production like type gags or where someone wanders in to a special place and we see some similar sorts of activities going on that lend themselves to repetition of activities in the animation in somewhat clever ways, like the Egyptian Melodies, Lullabye Land, Midnight in a Toy Shop and a number of others. His more atmospheric shorts, like The Old Mill, The Little House, and Mickey's Garden are more about the animation quality providing a strong emotional hook of some sort, with some also having the group activities as a basic hook for the limited "story". The Old Mill and The Little House were award winners, if I remember right, and are good at what they do, though there's no accounting for whether what they do will be good enough for any given viewer.

He also made some more standard Mickey cartoons as well, so it wasn't all "prestigious" or gimmicky stuff.

I briefly looked into it some more, cuz I was curious, and for Snow White and Pinocchio, Disney was really the controlling vision behind the movies down to every detail, so a director's credit for either film is something a little less than what one might normally expect. Sequence directors would sometimes work on film segments or scenes, but other times be in charge of certain aspects of the animation, like an individual character or the "funny bits" or the more complex multi-plane shots or other elements they were deemed as best fit. Jackson worked extensively on the features, but not, it seems, in a sense of overall control, just involved in lots of different elements throughout.

[Holymanm]

Yeah, that's more or less what I was thinking. It's common in anime as well - you have a "director" of a movie, but often they may not even draw or design a single character (let alone scene), write any part of the script, or do any of the animation. Then they'll delegate entire scenes/sequences to other folks, and it'll all be put together. Who's the most important person? Who contributes most?? ...well I guess this forum isn't The Auteurs, so who cares

Will take a look at some of those Jackson movies though!

[wba]

01. Funny Little Bunnies (1934)
02. Music Land (1935)
03. The Band Concert (1935)
04. The Grasshopper and the Ants (1934)
05. Peter Pan (1953)

Jackson seen: 24

[Umbugbene]

yeah i saw him given an unimpressive-looking credit for dumbo on the wiki page... but is a (second-listed) sequence director a director?

I'm inclined to agree, and I'm willing to remove my votes if that's the consensus. Come to think of it, it'll look weird if Fantasia or Dumbo wins... kinda like Gone with the Wind winning a George Cukor poll.

[...]

Edited my previous post to add some further detail from brief reading on the subject.

The Gone with the Wind comparison is interesting since that movie too didn't really have any director in the standard sense, Cukor and Fleming each worked on it, William Cameron Menzies was more responsible than either of them for the overall look of the film and in some ways holding it all together, but it was really Selznick himself that oversaw the entirety of the effort and was involved in all the major decision making. Fleming, Cukor, and Menzies each made some important decisions and added their own artistic view to the movie, but none really directed it in the way someone like Ford directed most of his movies, which kinda goes back to the brief Rebecca discussion as well. When Selznick took an interest, or Disney or any of the major producer/studio heads get involved, they end up calling the shots when they want to since they're the ones paying everyone else.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

1. Elmer Elephant (1936)
2. The Old Mill (1937)
3. Music Land (1935)
4. Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938)
5. Dumbo (1941)

The problems of authorship in animation in the studio era really comes to the foreground in thinking about the filmography of Wilfred Jackson. From the perspective of promotion, Jackson was merely a hand in the extended body of Walt Disney, a hand moving in keeping with Disney's ostensible authorship. I've never encountered anyone who classes Jackson as one of the auteurs of this era of American animation, something the Warner Bros. folks are more likely to be honoured with (Tashlin, Avery, Jones, Clampett), but that makes him all the more interesting to poll for that.

[Umbugbene]

it was really Selznick himself that oversaw the entirety of the effort and was involved in all the major decision making. Fleming, Cukor, and Menzies each made some important decisions and added their own artistic view to the movie, but none really directed it in the way someone like Ford directed most of his movies, which kinda goes back to the brief Rebecca discussion as well.

Good point. This is probably true for many other Hollywood studio films, especially in the 1930s. Irving Thalberg for example put a creative stamp on the films made under him.

[john ryan]

Seen 7, including his segments in Dumbo and Fantasia

1. Cinderella
2. Alice in Wonderland
3. Peter Pan

[Caracortada]

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
2. Song of the South
3. Peter Pan
4. Fantasia
5. Lady and the Tramp

[wba]

I've never encountered anyone who classes Jackson as one of the auteurs of this era of American animation, something the Warner Bros. folks are more likely to be honoured with (Tashlin, Avery, Jones, Clampett), but that makes him all the more interesting to poll for that.

I don't care about Tashlin, Avery, Jones, Clampett et al, but consider Jackson one of the outstanding animation directors of his era. That's why I picked him.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I've never encountered anyone who classes Jackson as one of the auteurs of this era of American animation, something the Warner Bros. folks are more likely to be honoured with (Tashlin, Avery, Jones, Clampett), but that makes him all the more interesting to poll for that.

I don't care about Tashlin, Avery, Jones, Clampett et al, but consider Jackson one of the outstanding animation directors of his era. That's why I picked him.

Lol yeah, I figured that would be your view. I should have rather said "I had never encountered anyone until, now, WBA". Don't mean it as a criticism at all, quite the contrary. Idiosyncrasies in director love are increasingly my favourite aspect of auteurism and reallly of cinephilia in general.

[thoxans]

that's why i luv me sum kathleen collins, robert hiltzik, sarah jacobson, yoshifumi kondo, barbara loden, john elias michalakis, etc. et al.

[brian d]

i think i'm up next. any chance on pabst? (i have 9.) or chor yuen? (5 for me, but a few more lined up soon.) or parajanov? (11.) or maybe if we're ready to shift to filmmakers with smaller bodies of work, ghatak? (got all 8 that he did that seem to be available.)

[Umbugbene]

I have 12 Pabst, 3 Yuen, 6 Parajanov, and 3 Ghatak. Nice choices mostly.

[flip]

it seems likely pabst will work, i don't have nearly enough, but if one other person has seen 8+, we'll go with him, and get to the others later on

[wba]

Pabst: 9
Chor: 2
Parajanov: 3
Ghatak: 2

[john ryan]

10 pabst for me

[flip]

thanks, pabst is confirmed for our next poll, will start that tomorrow

[...]

Oh, I hope people get a chance to check out The New Spirit, it's a good bit of deranged fun. A Donald Duck short on the patriotic duty and joy of paying income tax. Taxes to beat the Axis!

The scenes explaining how your tax dollars are put to use are especially nutty in their excess. Moloch-like machines in factories spitting out armaments while the narrators enthuses about: "Taxes making guns, machine guns, anti-tank guns, long range guns, guns, guns, all kinds of guns." and then planes and ships and so on, all absent any human figures, just personified machines taking on the Nazis and Japan. If I hadn't already done my taxes for the year, this surely would done the trick.

[Roscoe]

1. Night On Bald Mountain fromFANTASIA
2. THE BAND CONCERT

[...]

Lullaby Land
The Wise Little Hen
The New Spirit
Mickey's Garden
The Old Mill

[flip]

just watched eight so i could vote:

The Old Mill
Egyptian Melodies
Funny Little Bunnies
Music Land