Produced during the darkest days of World War II, NEW TOWNS FOR OLD features two middle-aged men touring an unnamed city trying to accustom itself to the devastation of German bombs (actually Sheffield). The film takes the form of a series of questions: one of the men skeptically asks what can be done to alleviate existing socio- economic problems, while the other provides the answers.
The questions covered include slum clearance, the building of new flats and industrial amenities separate from one another, the creation of new green spaces, the division of cities into industrial areas, suburbs, and green belts, and the provision of better lives for everyone.
The photography of the old industrial landscape is breath-taking, capturing a world that has all but disappeared now, with children playing among slag-heaps, women trying to sweep their front steps on cobbled streets, dilapidated trolley-buses passing in melancholy fashion along deserted roads, and a general atmosphere of neglect dominating the surroundings. No one, it seems, has hitherto really cared about the community as a whole in the pursuit of money and riches.
With a vivid script by Dylan Thomas, NEW TOWNS FOR OLD posits an alternative vision of social and community responsibility with everyone working for everyone else; where social gradations do not matter; and where the public good is paramount. The film ends with a telling gesture, where one of the men turns direct to the camera and points direct to the audience, making them palpably aware that it as much their responsibility for social change as that of the bureaucrats'.
This vision, radical for its time, looked forward to the New Vision of Britain proposed when the Labour Government entered office in 1945.
The questions covered include slum clearance, the building of new flats and industrial amenities separate from one another, the creation of new green spaces, the division of cities into industrial areas, suburbs, and green belts, and the provision of better lives for everyone.
The photography of the old industrial landscape is breath-taking, capturing a world that has all but disappeared now, with children playing among slag-heaps, women trying to sweep their front steps on cobbled streets, dilapidated trolley-buses passing in melancholy fashion along deserted roads, and a general atmosphere of neglect dominating the surroundings. No one, it seems, has hitherto really cared about the community as a whole in the pursuit of money and riches.
With a vivid script by Dylan Thomas, NEW TOWNS FOR OLD posits an alternative vision of social and community responsibility with everyone working for everyone else; where social gradations do not matter; and where the public good is paramount. The film ends with a telling gesture, where one of the men turns direct to the camera and points direct to the audience, making them palpably aware that it as much their responsibility for social change as that of the bureaucrats'.
This vision, radical for its time, looked forward to the New Vision of Britain proposed when the Labour Government entered office in 1945.
