Pink (Bob Geldof, impersonating Waters himself, who was writing from hard experience) is so familiar a figure from rock’s drugged and drooling past that the moment when he flings the telly set through the window only gives one a sharp sense of deja vu. Photograph: Alamy Stock PhotoĪll this is not actually desperately original. Perhaps tension is sometimes a good thing to have around.Ī fire scene from the film. Except that, as a piece of pure cinematic technique, it is touched with an originality of expression and a thunderous conviction that lifts it a little beyond what is was as simply as aural tour de force. I found the album inflated, uneven but still quite something and that’s exactly what the film is. But he obviously doesn’t think they have resulted in a botch-up, and nor do I. The tensions between Parker, Waters and Scarfe have been well advertised, mostly by Parker.

At least something exists on celluloid, and millions who bought the album will see it. Which is a very good reason why people like Alan Parker should exist, even if his collaborators on this extraordinary film, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd and Gerald Scarfe, the artist, found his conception of it different to their own.

It is simply not the sort of project the Spielbergs, Scorseses and Coppolas would interest themselves in. N o American director would or could have made Pink Floyd The Wall (Empire, AA).

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