Pink Floyd – The Wall is a 1982 musical film directed by Alan Parker, based on the 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall. The screenplay was written by Pink Floyd vocalist and bassist Roger Waters. Bob Geldof plays rock star Pink, who, driven into insanity by the death of his father, constructs a physical and emotional wall to protect himself.
Like the album, the film is highly metaphorical, and symbolic imagery and sound are present most commonly. The film is mostly driven by music and does not feature much dialogue. The film is best known for its imagery of mental isolation, drug use, war, fascism, dark or disturbing animated sequences, sexual situations, violence and gore. Despite its turbulent production and the creators voicing their discontent about the final product, the film received generally positive reviews and has an established cult following.
Pink is a rock star, one of the many reasons which have left him depressed. At the beginning of the film, he appears motionless and expressionless, while remembering his father. ("When the Tigers Broke Free, Part 1") While Pink imagines a crowd of fans entering one of his concerts, but him receiving them in a fascist alter ego, a flashback reveals how his father was killed defending the Anzio beachhead during World War II, in Pink's infancy. ("In the Flesh?") The aftermath of the battle is seen ("The Thin Ice"), and thus, Pink's mother raises him alone, which affects Pink's childhood. ("Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1") A young Pink later discovers a scroll from "kind old King George" and other relics from his father's military service and death. ("When the Tigers Broke Free, Part 2") An animation depicts the war, showing that the death of the people was for nothing. ("Goodbye Blue Sky") Pink places a bullet on the track of an oncoming train within a tunnel, and the train that passes has children peering out of the windows wearing face masks.
At school, he is caught writing poems in class and is humiliated by the teacher who reads a poem from Pink's book (lyrics from the song "Money"). However, it is revealed that the bad treatment of the students is because of the unhappiness of the teacher's marriage. ("The Happiest Days of Our Lives") Pink imagines an oppressive school system in which children fall into a meat grinder. Pink then fantasizes about the children rising in rebellion and burning down the school, throwing the teacher onto a bonfire. ("Another Brick in The Wall, Part 2") As an adult now, Pink remembers his overprotective mother ("Mother"), and when he got married. After a phone call, Pink discovers that his wife is cheating on him, and another animation shows that every traumatic experience he has had is represented as a "brick" in the metaphorical wall he constructs around himself that divides him from all society. ("What Shall We Do Now?")
Pink then comes back to the hotel room with a groupie ("Young Lust"), only for her to annoy Pink to the point where he destroys the room in a fit of violence, scaring her away. ("One of My Turns") Depressed, he thinks about his wife, and feels trapped in his room. ("Don't Leave me Now") He then remembers every "brick" of his wall ("Another Brick in The Wall, Part 3"). His wall shown to be complete, and the film returns to the first scene. ("Goodbye Cruel World")
Now inside his wall, he does not leave his hotel room ("Is There Anybody Out There?"), and begins to lose his mind to metaphorical "worms". He shaves all his body hair, and watches The Dam Busters on television. ("Nobody Home") A flashback shows young Pink searching through trenches of the war ("Vera"), eventually finding himself as an adult. Young Pink runs in terror, and appears in a station, with the people demanding that the soldiers return home. ("Bring the Boys Back Home") Returning to the present, Pink's manager finds him in his hotel room, drugged and unresponsive. A paramedic injects him to enable him to perform. ("Comfortably Numb")
In this state, Pink dreams that he is a dictator and his concert is a fascist rally. ("In the Flesh") His followers proceed to attack people. ("Run Like Hell") He then holds a rally in suburban London, indicating his mind has taken over. ("Waiting for the Worms") The scene includes images of animated marching hammers that goose-step across ruins. Pink then stops hallucinating and screams "STOP!", deciding he no longer wants to be in the wall. He is then seen cowering in a bathroom stall, silently singing to himself as a security guard walks past him. ("Stop") In a climactic animated sequence, Pink, as a rag doll, is on trial for "showing feelings of an almost human nature", and his sentence is "to be exposed before his peers". His teacher and wife accuse him, while his mother tries to take him home. The judge gives the order to "tear down the wall!" ("The Trial") Following a prolonged silence, the wall is smashed as Pink can be heard screaming. Pink is never seen again after this. Several children are seen cleaning up a pile of debris, with a freeze-frame on one of the children emptying a Molotov cocktail, after which the film ends. ("Outside the Wall")
In the mid-1970s, as Pink Floyd gained mainstream fame, songwriter Roger Waters began feeling increasingly alienated from their audiences:
Audiences at those vast concerts are there for an excitement which, I think, has to do with the love of success. When a band or a person becomes an idol, it can have to do with the success that that person manifests, not the quality of work he produces. You don't become a fanatic because somebody's work is good, you become a fanatic to be touched vicariously by their glamour and fame. Stars—film stars, rock 'n' roll stars—represent, in myth anyway, the life as we'd all like to live it. They seem at the very centre of life. And that's why audiences still spend large sums of money at concerts where they are a long, long way from the stage, where they are often very uncomfortable, and where the sound is often very bad.
Waters was also dismayed by the "executive approach", which was only about success, not even attempting to get acquainted with the actual persons of whom the band was composed (addressed in an earlier song from Wish You Were Here, "Have a Cigar"). The concept of the wall, along with the decision to name the lead character "Pink", partly grew out of that approach, combined with the issue of the growing alienation between the band and their fans. This symbolised a new era for rock bands, as Pink Floyd "explored (... ) the hard realities of 'being where we are'", echoing ideas of alienation described by existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre.
Even before the original Pink Floyd album was recorded, the intention was to make a film from it. The original plan was for the film to be live footage from the album's tour, together with Scarfe's animation and extra scenes, and for Waters himself to star. EMI did not intend to make the film, as they did not understand the concept.
Director Alan Parker, a Pink Floyd fan, asked EMI whether The Wall could be adapted to film. EMI suggested that Parker talk to Waters, who had asked Parker to direct the film. Parker instead suggested that he produce it and give the directing task to Gerald Scarfe and Michael Seresin, a cinematographer. Waters began work on the film's screenplay after studying scriptwriting books. He and Scarfe produced a special-edition book containing the screenplay and art to pitch the project to investors. While the book depicted Waters in the role of Pink, after screen tests, he was removed from the starring role and replaced with new wave musician and frontman of the Boomtown Rats, Bob Geldof. In Behind the Wall, both Waters and Geldof later admitted to a story during casting where Geldof and his manager took a taxi to an airport, and Geldof's manager pitched the role to the singer, who continued to reject the offer and express his contempt for the project throughout the fare, unaware that the taxi driver was Waters' brother, who told Waters about Geldof's opinion.
Since Waters was no longer in the starring role, it no longer made sense for the feature to include Pink Floyd footage, so the live film aspect was dropped. The footage culled from the five Wall concerts at Earl's Court from 13–17 June 1981 that were held specifically for filming was deemed unusable also for technical reasons as the fast Panavision lenses needed for the low light levels turned out to have insufficient resolution for the movie screen. Complex parts such as "Hey You" still had not been properly shot by the end of the live shows. Parker convinced Waters and Scarfe that the concert footage was too theatrical and that it would jar with the animation and stage live action. After the concert footage was dropped, Seresin left the project and Parker became sole director.
Parker, Waters and Scarfe frequently clashed during production, and Parker described the filming as "one of the most miserable experiences of my creative life." Scarfe declared that he would drive to Pinewood Studios carrying a bottle of Jack Daniel's, because "I had to have a slug before I went in the morning, because I knew what was coming up, and I knew I had to fortify myself in some way." Waters said that filming was "a very unnerving and unpleasant experience".
During production, while filming the destruction of a hotel room, Geldof suffered a cut to his hand as he pulled away the Venetian blinds. The footage remains in the film. It was discovered while filming the pool scenes that Geldof did not know how to swim. Interiors were shot at Pinewood Studios, and it was suggested that they suspend Geldof in Christopher Reeve's clear cast used for the Superman flying sequences, but his frame was too small by comparison; it was then decided to make a smaller rig that was a more acceptable fit, and he lay on his back. In Nicholas Schaffner's book Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey (1991) it is claimed that the body cast from the film Supergirl (1984) was actually used instead.
The war scenes were shot on Saunton Sands in North Devon, which was also featured on the cover of Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason six years later.
The film was shown out of competition during the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.
The film's official premiere was at the Empire, Leicester Square in London, on 14 July 1982. It was attended by Waters and fellow Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Nick Mason, but not Richard Wright, who was no longer a member of the band. It was also attended by various celebrities including Geldof, Scarfe, Paula Yates, Pete Townshend, Sting, Roger Taylor, James Hunt, Lulu and Andy Summers.
A documentary was produced about the making of Pink Floyd – The Wall entitled The Other Side of the Wall that includes interviews with Parker, Scarfe, and clips of Waters, originally aired on MTV in 1982. A second documentary about the film was produced in 1999 entitled Retrospective: Looking Back at The Wall that includes interviews with Waters, Parker, Scarfe, and other members of the film's production team. Both are featured on The Wall DVD as extras.
The film soundtrack contains most songs from the album, albeit with several changes, as well as additional material.
The only songs from the album not used in the film are "Hey You" and "The Show Must Go On". "Hey You" was deleted as Waters and Parker felt the footage was too repetitive (eighty per cent of the footage appears in montage sequences elsewhere) but is a bonus feature on the DVD release.
A soundtrack album from Columbia Records was listed in the film's end credits, but only a single containing "When the Tigers Broke Free" and the rerecorded "Bring the Boys Back Home" were released. "When the Tigers Broke Free" later became a bonus track on the 1983 album The Final Cut. Guitarist David Gilmour dismissed the album as a collection of songs that had been rejected for The Wall project, but were being recycled. The song, in the edit used for the single, also appears on the 2001 compilation album Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.
