Before I get to the first part of "Tigers," I'd like to
address the non-Floyd song vaguely heard in the background of the movie's
opening section. It's called "The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot,"
by Vera Lynn (see "Vera" later in this analysis). The lyrics are as
follows: "Christmas comes but once a year for every girl and boy/ The
laughter and the joy/ They find in each new toy./ I tell you of the
little boy who lives across the way/ This fella's Christmas is just
another day..." 
At
this point, the vacuum cleaner whirs into electric life and "When the
Tigers Broke Free, Part 1" begins. After the song ends and we get that
wonderful close-up of the Mickey Mouse watch, Vera's song continues
with : "He's the little boy that Santa Claus forgot/ And goodness knows,
he didn't want a lot./ He sent a note to Santa, what he wanted was a
drum/ This broken little heart when he woke and he hadn't come/ In the
streets, yes he..." Once again, the vacuum drowns out the song. From
the outset, Waters sets up a few brilliant parallels that will recur
throughout the movie (and album). The very title of Vera's song, "The
Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot," is steeped with ideas of anticipation
and disappointment, of longing for something and being (seemingly) overlooked.
The connections with Pink are fairly obvious when viewing Vera's song
in this light of hollow expectations. Maybe the little boy of Vera's
song received nothing because Santa does not exist in reality. I know
this seems a bit oversimplified, but perhaps the point is that placing
your faith and hope in the unseen and the unreal is as futile as, say,
expecting to be born into a loving world, a stable country, and a loving
family complete with two parents. If anything, "The Wall" is a postmodern
requiem for both former and present times, lamenting the pass of a pre-war
era that will never be again while grieving the state of the post-World
War II world. Correspondingly, Vera's song becomes less a charming song
about a down-on-his-luck kid and more a dirge concerning the uncertainties
of life during and after the War. In a sense, her message is the very
first message one would learn in a highly fragmented, postmodern world:
there is no certainty. Accordingly, Pink's life is bookmarked by post-war
fragmentation and uncertainty, both literally and symbolically. The
artistic "first chapter" of Pink's life (i.e. the opening of the movie)
is Vera's song about the futility of hope while the real "first chapter"
finds Pink fatherless. Even more interesting is the vacuum cleaner that
interrupts Vera's song in order to segue into "When the Tigers Broke
Free, Part 1." The vacuum is both the object that obstructs Pinks thoughts
in the present as well as the physical embodiment of the void around
which Pink's entire life is based. Therefore it is only fitting that
Waters, known for his fascination with cycles (as evidenced throughout
most, if not all, of Pink Floyd's albums), leads us from Pink/the-little-boy-that-Santa-Claus-Forgot
to the vacuum/void before taking us to the main root of this abyss…the
absent father.
"When
the Tigers Broke Free" is perhaps one of my favorite songs from "the
Wall" movie simply for its astounding emotional depth. Although it is
one of my favorite songs in the movie, I can see why it wasn't included
on the album: it's too straightforward. (On the DVD commentary, Waters
says that "Tigers" was written specifically for the movie, although
he later says that it was a song that was just lying around. Could be
that it was a fragment during the album's recording but wasn't polished
until the movie was in production.) The album "The Wall" is beautiful
and compelling in the very fact that it is so hazy and cryptic. Rarely
is there a song with astraightforward narrative chronicling one incident
at one point in time with such a clear and concise point of view. But
that's what we get with "When the Tigers Broke Free," a rare and extremely
raw portrait (at least in terms of "the Wall") of personal loss more
in tune with the songs from the follow-up (and quasi-sequel) album "the
Final Cut: a Requiem for the Post-War Dream." Yet even this is fitting
for the album's beginning as a sort of parallel to the beginning of
Pink's life. Pink doesn't start building his wall until after he is
born and, even then, after he comes to certain key realizations. Therefore
it is fitting that Waters uses "Tigers" during Pink's symbolically pre-birth
state (with his birth taking place during "In the Flesh?"), a time when
there are no bricks and therefore no wall; a quiescent time when emotion
is just that, raw and unfiltered. While the narrative voice is grown
up and reflective and, in this first part, almost detached, like a historian
recounting events of the past, it is still very prenatal both in terms
of chronology and narrative action. Chronologically speaking, the events
recounted are, as previously noted, events of the past taking place
before or just after the narrator's birth, thus accounting for the semi-detached
tone of the first half of the song. In terms of the album's story, the
song acts as a kind of prelude to Pink's own story, with Pink still
lethargic in his hotel room/wombuntil his metaphorical birth into narrative
action with "In the Flesh?"
The
tone of the first part of "Tigers" is very detached and observational,
only hinting at the more personal voice that breaks out in the second
part of the song later in the movie with certain colored (and therefore
subjective) adjectives such as "miserable," "black," and "ordinary."
As previously noted, the song is very straightforward and calm in comparison
to the rest of the album, lacking the more dense metaphorical imagery
of subsequent songs. As such, the actual song lyrics need little explanation
in terms of narrative and symbolism: the action takes place in a trench
at the frontline of the Anzio bridgehead in 1944. Waters comments on
"the Wall" DVD commentary that his father, who served as the model for
Pink's own dad, was 2nd Lieutenant of the 8th Battalion of the Royal
Fusiliers Company C. The company held the frontline in February 1944
when the Germans launched a counterattack against the Allies in an attempt
to drive them back to the sea. The fate of the men is still undetermined
at this point in the film / album as is that of the still unborn Pink.
Yet history (and Waters) reveals that the Royal Fusiliers Company C
was completely destroyed by the counterattack, taking a "few hundred
ordinary lives," among which was Roger / Pink's father.
One of the most interesting things to me, cinematically, at this point
is the plethora of extreme close-ups during "the Little Boy that Santa
Clause Forgot" and "When the Tigers Broke Free, Part 1." The movie opens
with a gorgeous long shot of the hotel hallway, very ghostlike and almost
sterile in its absolute barren whiteness. The shot also is evocative
of the birth canal leading to the womb/room that Pink currently occupies.
Yet from here, the viewer is treated to one close-up after another,
from Pink's father lighting his lantern with Lions matches (perhaps
suggesting the noble cause and hearts of the Allied forces) to Pink
in his hotel room with a cigarette burned down to his fingers. Every
scratch on the glass of Pink's Mickey Mouse watch
is visible (the watch serving as a reminder of the childhood he never
had) as is every hair on his arm. The effect is both intimate and unnerving;
we feel a certain closeness with Pink's father as he lights his lantern
and a cigarette, utterly alone in a womb of darkness as sounds of bombs
and guns fire sporadically all around him; yet at the same time, we
feel a paranoid sense of scrutiny as the camera details every pore and
hair of Pink's arm. In an instant we become both the rabid media / fans
obsessively observing every facet of Pink's being as well as Pink himself
under the world's microscopic eye as a result of his fame.
Another shot which has many fans guessing is the transition
between Pink's father and Pink in which a young boy (presumably Pink)
runs across an open rugby field with only a goal post breaking the horizon.
I've received many e-mails specifically addressing this one shot alone,
a few even speculating that the goalpost, resembling the letter H, foreshadows
Pink's drug addiction, particularly heroin. While this is quite possible,
I believe that the shot is used to set up the contrast between Pink's
psychological stages at many points during his story. The young child
running across a playing field as well as the quick cut to the Mickey
Mouse watch both denote a certain childlike innocence that Pink seems
to keep trying to revisit throughout the narrative. The field is
open and limitless save for the goal posts, alluding to the infinite
possibilities of life before birth and during childhood. Yet as every
scratch and blemish on Pink's watch shows, one's past childhood is etched
and unattainable, especially for Pink whose innocence was marred far
too early by the loss of his father. Like the watch, Pink's mental landscape
is quite different in later, parallel scenes when the older Pink sits
in a chair watching television surrounded by a hostile, barbed landscape.
Even the childlike innocence of the child on the rugby field is underscored
by his very solitude. He is the only visibly living being in the landscape.
Viewed in this light, the scene might not only foreshadow Pink's drug
dependence but also his alienation as a child as the result of losing
his father in the war. As such, the sequence creates both a visual and
thematic chain of events, starting with Pink's father engulfed by the
darkness of war leading to Pink's pre and after-birth isolation eventually
spawning thedrugged-out, unresponsive man who is so mentally fragmented
that he doesn't even notice that his cigarette has burned down to his
fingers let alone the maid's knock athis door.
Interestingly, the conclusion of the calm, pre-album sequences
(those cinematic events that take place before the album-proper begins)
focuses on both the chain on Pink's door as well as the locked doors
preventing the concert-goers from entering the stadium. The chains which
held Pink together to this point are about to burst, not only allowing
for Pink's conception and birth on the chronological plane of the story
but also for the release of the very emotions and memories against which
Pink is building his wall.
