Did you notice how many bonb sites were in the film. You see this in a lot of early films. People must have just taken the scenery for granted. They were so accustomed to it in those days. I remember a few of them myself - that's going back a bit. It was rather horrible, but even that was quite a few years after the war ended.
shareI rather enjoyed seeing them because it takes me back to a London I never knew. It looked like they were taken forgranted.
Fatima had a fetish for a wiggle in her scootshare
At the time we never gave the bomb sites a second glance, we just grew up with them in London. A few had been cleared by the early 1950s - such as the area around Waterloo used for the Festival of Britain in 1951 - but many were left until the economy of Britain turned the corner. Remember, Britain was bust after the war. I can remember the bomb sites near St Pauls Cathedral which featured in many 1950s films were still there well into the 1960s.
shareA lot of those bomb sites lasted for years as the country did not have enough money to build on them.
Its that man again!!
Bomb sites appear in so many films right into the 1950s. Usually they are seen as a playground for children. It must have been very depressing. I don't know how long it took to develop all of the sites in Britain and Europe. But by the 1960s these places don't seem to appear in films as much.
shareOne of the kids says the climactic fight was held at Barrage[?] Wharf at Shadwell.
shareI used to love to explore vacant buildings has a kid. A city block would have been a playland. Depressing for the older folks perhaps but not kids.
shareWhat a great playground for kids, albeit dangerous. Still the fun they must have had clamouring around the sites imagining all sorts of games. Kids had imagination in those days.
SkiesAreBlue
Well put, Skies A B. Such playgrounds were indeed fun, though horribly dangerous. Nevertheless I cannot agree with your implication in "Kids had imagination in those days" that kids nowadays do not. I speak as kid in those days myself, albeit one a tad younger than most of those in the film (I was five/six when it was made), and I can assure you that there were plenty of unimaginative kids around then along with the brighter ones just as there are many of both sorts now. Generalisations of that kind are never helpful.
Of course we had no computers or computer games then and only very limited TV (one black and white channel on for about five or six hours a day) if families could afford it - most couldn't - so our entertainment was largely limited to comics (like the Trump!) and radio so imagination did have to be used. If you had posted "Kids had to rely much more on imagination in those days" I would have agreed.
Thank you for pointing that out to me, mikecrisp. Much appreciated.
SkiesAreBlue
I remember a Polish friend telling me that everybody used to go by bomb sites in their cities on their way to work and school, pick up a few bricks and lay them down in an orderly manner thus helping the rebuilding of the cities.
SkiesAreBlue