The Happiest Days Of Our Lives (Wall film)

The Happiest Days Of Our Lives 1:58
     (written by Roger Waters)

Lyrics and dialogue:
Pink's Friend 1: They're our bullets, ain't they?
Pink's Friend 2 (Tubbs): I don't know.
Pink: Come on, Tubbs. It's great goin' in the tunnel.
PF 2 (Tubbs): Don't you think it'd be dangerous, Pinkie?
Pink: No.
(TUBBS FALLS) Pink: You all right, Tubbs?
PF 2 (Tubbs): Yeah. Hurt me knee a bit.
(ENTERING THE TUNNEL) Pink: Come on.
PF 2 (Tubbs): No.
Pink: Come on!
PF 2 (Tubbs): No!
PF 1: No, it's too dangerous!
PF 2 (Tubbs): We'll watch the train.
Pink: Gimme the torch.
PF 2 (Tubbs): Pinky! Here comes the train! Get off the line you bloody idiot, here it comes! Pinky! Get off the line! Here it comes! Pinky, get off the line!

Teacher: You! You! Yes, You! Stand still laddie!

When we grew up and went to school
There were certain teachers who
Would hurt the children any way they could
By pouring their derision upon anything we did
Exposing any weakness however carefully hidden by the kid

Teacher: What have we here, laddie? Mysterious scribblings? A secret code? No — poems, no less! Poems, everybody! The laddie reckons himself a poet! 'Money get back/I'm all right Jack/Keep your hands off my stack. New car, caviar/Four star daydream/Think I'll buy me a football team.' Absolute rubbish, laddie. Get on with your work. Repeat after me: 'An acre is the area of a rectangle whose length is one furlong and whose width is one chain.'

But in town it was well known when they got home at night
Their fat and psychopathic wives
Would thrash them within inches of their lives

Pink and two friends head down to the train tracks in order to explode the bullets he found the other day in his mother's room. Pink is caught in the tunnel when the train comes by, and the exploding bullet provides the segue into the visual imagery of The Happiest Days of Our Lives. We move forward to see Pink at school, being abused by a bitter schoolmaster who ridicules Pink's creativity. The lines of poetry he reads out are, of course, from 'Money' on The Dark Side of the Moon. However, this vignette is fictionalized, since Roger Waters, who Pink is partially based upon, certainly did not write the lyrics to Money as a child (in fact, he wrote them at the same time as the music).

It is interested to see how the film illustrates the lyric 'Their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives.' Instead of a scene of physical violence, the wife of the Teacher is shown exerting an iron will against her husband, coldly forcing him to eat the gristle from his chicken the way she might do to a child. An immediate and valid psychological parallel is drawn between this event and scenes of the Teacher, his face twisted by anger and bitterness, strapping children in his office. Time includes dialogue in the middle section.

TRACK LISTING
Overture/Prelude
When the Tigers Broke Free Part 1
In the Flesh?
Thin Ice, The
Another Brick in the Wall part 1
When the Tigers Broke Free Part 2
Goodbye Blue Sky
Happiest Days of Our Lives, The
Another Brick in the Wall part 2
Mother
What Shall We Do Now?
Young Lust
One of My Turns
Don't Leave Me Now
Another Brick in the Wall part 3
Goodbye Cruel World
Is There Anybody Out There?
Nobody Home
Vera
Bring the Boys Back Home
Comfortably Numb
In the Flesh
Run Like Hell
Waiting for the Worms
Stop
Trial, The
Outside the Wall