No one could quite work it out why the medieval city of Coventry had been subjected to such savage bombardment by the Nazis in 1940. The medieval city was a center of industry and technology, to be sure; but no bigger or smaller than neighboring areas such as Birmingham. Nonetheless the city was subjected to an endless rain of bombardment, to such an extent that its heart was ripped out. Thousands of people were killed, rendered homeless, or disillusioned. Some said Hitler had simply chosen the city as part of his Baedeker Raids, in revenge for the Allies' bombing the city of Munich.
Made at the end of the war, A CITY REBORN looks forward to the future of a city which, despite all its sufferings, had decided to overcome its traumas and pull together to form a new socially inclusive vision of the British city. The basic conceit involves a returning soldier (Bill Owen) returning to the seedy Coventry Station and touring the city - visiting pubs and other places, while imagining a life of future security with his wife, a nursery and garden space.
Many of the sentiments might seem rather tenuous now, but they were precisely what ordinary people wanted at that time. It did not matter whether the new housing would be prefabricated or not; people just wanted somewhere to live. The vision of a new Coventry - adumbrated by a series of three-piece-suited town planners - included separate shopping and living areas, green belts, and industries kept well away from residential areas.
When the city was eventually rebuilt, few of these dreams actually came to pass - a combination of lack of financial investment and council cutbacks restricted the amount of resources available. But nonetheless the vision and the drive was still there, which counted for a lot in 1945.
