PINK FLOYD - THE WALL


UK, 1982, 95 minutes, Colour.
Bob Geldof, Christine Hargreaves, James Laurenson, Eleanor David, Bob Hoskins, Jenny Wright..
Directed by Alan Parker.

Pink Floyd: The Wall is an extraordinarily complex film. Many in the 1980s found it too difficult – or considered it in the same vein as some of the psychedelic films (including 2001: A Space Odyssey) of the late 1960s.

The film was directed by Alan Parker, who had already made an impact by this time with Bugsy Malone and Midnight Express as well as Fame. With Bugsy Malone and Fame he showed he could handle the presentation of music and music styles on screen (as he was later to do with his film version of Evita). Parker was also involved in more domestic dramas like Shoot the Moon and was then to make Birdy, Angel Heart and Mississippi Burning. He returned to music and popular culture in 1991 with The Commitments.

The film features the music of Pink Floyd – quite extensively (and won BAFTA awards and other awards for the song ‘Another Brick in the Wall’. The music is strongly enhanced by a number of animation sequences drawn by celebrated British artist, Gerald Scarfe.

The film is the portrait of a burnt-out rock ‘n roll singer who finds he can be alive only on stage but with the help of drugs. This echoed, of course, the lifestyles of many of the popular stars and rock 'n roll artists since the 1960s. It is interesting that the character is played by Bob Geldof, at this time from The Boomtown Rats, within two years to be a world celebrity for his intervention in helping worldwide the famine in Ethiopia.

The film is very British in tone, goes back to the time of World War Two to try to explain the background of the burnt-out rock star. The film also uses the movie The Dambusters with Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd, as a point of reference for themes, Britishness, war, violence, peace.

Bob Hoskins, rather earlier in his career, appears as the manager. However, it is an opportunity to see the work of Alan Parker, the performance of Bob Geldof, hear the music of Pink Floyd and see the drawings of Gerald Scarfe.

1. The impact of Pink Floyd as a group? Their music and lyrics, themes and images? A group of the '70s? Mood, comment on the times, interpretation of the times?

2. The film's use of the music: production, songs, lyrics? As background, as part of the plot, as comment? Themes of education, war, madness, women, isolation.. alienation, despair? The style of the insertion of the songs, the visualising, animation? The theme 'Another Brick in the Wall' as chorus for the film? The range of the songs of the album: 'The Tigers Broke Free'. 'In the Flesh', 'The Thin Ice', 'Another Brick in the Wall', 'Goodbye Blue Sky'. 'The Happiest Days of Our Lives', 'Empty Spaces', 'Mother', 'One of My Turns', 'Don't Leave Me Now', 'Goodbye Cruel World', 'Hey You', 'Is There Anybody Out There', 'Nobody Home'. 'Vera', 'Bring the Boys Back Home', 'Waiting for the Worms', 'Stop', 'Outside the Wall', 'Young Lust', 'Comfortably Numb', 'Run Like Hell', 'The Trial', 'The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot' (sung by Vera Lynn)?

3. The direction of Alan Parker: his films, verve? The influence of the rock operas. Tommy? The verve and imagination blended with realism? Colour photography, Panavision? Real, animation,' dream? Britain in the past, present? What kind of future? The dream and nightmare? The importance of the editing? The influence of TV commercial style for pace, images, editing? Colour, shapes, movement, sounds, noise? The film's focus on technical communication?

4. How well did the film blend reality and unreality? Faces and masks, the variety of settings, the animation and the use of real images e.g. the happers in the cartoon., in the fantasies? The impact for the audience in terms of response to Britain in the past, the present, the world of themes, interiors. imagination?

5. The contribution of the animation? Its style, movement, colour, vividness? The points of insertion throughout the film? Episodes? The monster trying to devour Pink in the empty room? The themes of the animation: birds, leaves, butterflies, fields? Gentle images turning to monstrous? Consuming, distorted, strangling? Protean shapes? Sex. war? The cross and the tombs? The blood from the cross going down the drain? The scream, the wall, the child? The judge to the seducer defecating on his victims? Pink's monster? The impact of the style and the themes? Their corresponding to the music and the lyrics?

6. The framework of the careers of rock stars in the '60s and '70s: their control over the audience, the fascist control (at the beginning and end of the film), the fact and explanation of the meteoric rise of pop stars, their popularity? Success, concerts, wealth, groupies, fast-talking managers? The impact on the artist - retirement, withdrawal, watching television, wrecking and smashing, madness, shaving chest and eyebrows, nightmares and memories, transformation and madness? The transformation of Pink into the fascist style star with his particular type of entertainment? The rallies, the persecution of minorities, the fanatic followers? Violence in the streets? The film's move from realism to fantasy as comment on the rock stars? The screenplay written by Roger Waters ? and his grimly poetic interpretation of his career (from the vantage point of success?).

7. The presentation of The Dambusters on television throughout the film. A reviewer suggested 'a desert island movie'! The Dambusters on television, present everywhere, available? The comment on Britain in the '40s, a heroic past, Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd? The facts about The Dambusters. Experiments, trials, bombs and repercussions? The irony of the bombs and the killing of Pink's father? The animated presentation of war and bombs? The military boffins and their gentlemanliness, the grief about the dog being dead? The clue from The Dambusters for Pink's reaction about his father, the way that he grew up? The fatherless Englishman trying to cope with the contemporary pressures?

8. The presentation of Pink's father: going to the war, with his men, his heroic action, death, the bomb? The continued close-ups of him dead? Yet his return from the dead and looking at Pink - the scene with his return with the rat? His being seen as a corpse in bed? The significance of his absence? Pink's mother with the pram in the garden crosscut with the father's death? Her praying in the church and Pink playing with the toy plane? The effect of his growing up - illness, going to bed, the need for the rat as a pet? His mother going shopping and his playing in the park, wanting the attention of the father with his child with the merry-go-round and slippery dip? The repercussions of the absent father?

9. The sketch of Pink as a child: growing up without a father, the scene in the church, the park, at home, watching the girl strip, school and the persecution about the poem, the pet rat and his mother's rejection of it and his dropping it in the river? The fantasy sequences with the child revisiting the trenches, the child Pink seeing the mad adult Pink? The child taking the adult's place watching The Dambusters? The thew of the child as father to the man? The man seeking to look at things through the eyes of childhood?

10. Pink's marriage, his moroseness, relationship with his wife, the fantasy of the wife and boyfriend and the telephone call, his wife coming to see him? His isolation ? television, shaving, collapse, madness?

11. The wife and her ordinariness, her Ban The Bomb friend and their liaison? The superimposition of their lovemaking with Pink's madness? Her trying to arouse Pink. the visit? The comparison with the groupies and the show business world, their coming into the premises, sex and the policeman, caravan and the orgy atmosphere? The girl and her going to the room with Pink, trying to provoke him, sucking his fingers, her terror as Pink goes berserk and smashes everything? The animation with sex as devouring and bloody? Flowers turning into monsters? The sexual overtones of the animated judge?

12. Sex, death, blood and the war?

13. The themes of education: another brick in the wall - the realism of the classroom sequences with the teacher, the headmaster? The mockery about the poems? Pink's fantasies? The children marching, the masks, falling into the mincing machine, the caning and the wife controlling the teacher? The teacher taking it out on Pink? The resumption of this theme in the trial scene? The comparison with the doctor keeping Pink in bed?

14. The showbiz entourage, the manager and his smart talk, having to control situations, especially in the wrecked room? The hotel manager and his desperation?

15. The build-up to the animation trial? The characters in Pink's life coming and confronting him? The ominous silence before the final explosion of the wall?

16. The epilogue with the children, the wreckage in London, the innocent child setting fire to the Molotov cocktail?

17. The film's comment on contemporary Britain - from the '40s to the '80s? Rights and wrongs, justice and injustice, alienation, materialism, success and failure? Protest and scream?