St Mungo's Medals: Glasgow in the 1950s

Dirty Modern Scoundrel writes:

Mungos's Medals is a 1961 film directed by John Elder for the Corporation of the City of Glasgow, following the array of Festival of Britain and Saltaire Society awards won by various postwar housing projects in the city. 

The film attempts to show the lives of a number of residents, and how they had been transformed by the postwar rebuilding. 'People behind this window have created a home in a hovel,' declares the narrator as we view a family eating their 'last supper' in their Gorbals tenement 

No attempt is made to interview them, rather the family is spoken about by the narrator with the familiar patronising tone of the midcentury documentary narrator: 'All she has wanted for years now was a door to shut on the world'; 'His ambition to build and build and build and build until, ooops, down they come!'. 

Despite the tone of the film, the footage is amazing.