No Resting Place

Release Date: 1951-01-12

Overview: The brilliant British documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha made his feature-film debut with 1950's No Resting Place. Filmed on location in Ireland, the film is a lightly fictionalized study of that country's itinerant workmen. Michael Gough plays tinker Alec Kyle, whose life is thrown into turmoil when he accidentally kills a man. Kyle spends the rest of the film evading Guard Mannigan (Noel Purcell), a civil servant who relies on instinct rather than scientific deduction to get his man. Without ever trying to elicit sympathy for his characters, director Rotha manages to compellingly detail the miserable living and working conditions of Ireland's nomad artisans.

Rating: 5 / 10

Cast

Michael Gough

as Alec Kyle

Noel Purcell

as Guard Mannigan

Jack MacGowran

as Billy Kyle

Eithne Dunne

as Meg Kyle

Brian O'Higgins

as Tom Kyle