No Resting Place

The brilliant British documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha made his featurefilm debut with 1950s No Resting Place Filmed on location in Ireland the film is a lightly fictionalized study of that countrys 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 Irelands nomad artisans