Films from Abroad: Fact and Fiction

Abstract

Few Americans will have an opportunity to see No Resting Place. A dismal failure in its native England, it was little more successful in its brief New York showing. Yet it is the work of a distinguished cinema artist and a film of far more than average power and persuasion. Paul Rotha is known as a director of documentaries and a writer about the film. But here he is producing a fiction film. His story is of the life of an Irish tinker's family. The father accidentally kills a gamekeeper; a suspicious and aging policeman vows to bring him to justice and ultimately does so. This simple tale has been photographed against the Irish countryside with a cast of players most of whom are from Dublin's Abbey Theatre. There is much that is memorable in the film. It is first to be commended for its avoidance of sentimentality. A tinker's life is hard; that is, indeed, the primary point the film has to make and there is no softness in its presentation of this point. Its tinker family is a tough crew with tight mouths and unblinking eyes, passionately clannish, brawling, unrelenting in their contempt for the rest of the world. Perhaps the most moving thing in the film is the tinkers' silent little boy upon whose ageless poise the film makes no spoken comment. We have a powerful sense of the