No Resting Place is a 1951 British motion picture directed by Paul Rotha, produced by Colin Lesslie Productions, and starring Michael Gough, based on Ian Niall's 1948 novel. It is noteworthy for its early use of location shooting [1] and for bringing the acting style of Dublin's Abbey Theatre to the screen, [2] as well as being the fiction feature debut of director Paul Rotha and cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky.
It was the first fiction film directed by Rotha, formerly a documentary maker. [3] The film draws on Rotha's documentary background as well as Italian neo-Realism, with scenes of rural and domestic life particularly showing the influence of his documentaries. [1] It was made for a low budget of 60,000 GBP. [4]
It was shot entirely on location in Wicklow, Ireland by cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky. [5] It was the first film as cinematographer for Suschitzky, who went on to photograph films including Get Carter .
The soundtrack was by William Alwyn, using a small ensemble of traditional Irish instruments: harp, flute, and violin. [1]
Apart from stars Michael Gough and Noel Purcell, Rotha drew the cast from Irish theatres including the Abbey Theatre and Irish radio. [1] It is regarded by some critics as part of an Abbey school of filmmaking that aimed to mimic the realism of contemporary mainland-European film. [2]
Gough plays an Irish Traveller who is relentlessly pursued by a policeman (Mannigan, played by Noel Purcell) after accidentally killing a gamekeeper.
Ian Johnson praises moments of touching emotional clarity but criticises "inept scripting" and a poor ending, probably imposed by censors. [1]
Monthly Film Bulletin praised the authenticity of its depiction of tinker life, while finding the figure of the pursuing civil guard Mannigan to be less convincing. [6] The Manchester Guardian applauded the truthfulness of its depiction of the Irish countryside and Gough's performance, and commended it for a more truthful portrayal of Ireland than the traditional stage Irish cliches, while suggesting it could do with a bit more poetry. [4]
At the 1952 British Academy Film Awards, it was nominated for Best Film from any Source and Best British Film.
Abraham Stoker was an Irish author who wrote the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the West End's Lyceum Theatre, which Irving owned.
Man of Aran is a 1934 Irish fictional documentary (ethnofiction) film shot, written and directed by Robert J. Flaherty about life on the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. It portrays characters living in premodern conditions, documenting their daily routines such as fishing off high cliffs, farming potatoes where there is little soil, and hunting for huge basking sharks to get liver oil for lamps. Some situations are fabricated, such as one scene in which the shark fishermen are almost lost at sea in a sudden gale. Additionally, the family members shown are not actually related, having been chosen from among the islanders for their photogenic qualities.
Micheál Mac Liammóir was an actor, designer, dramatist, writer, and impresario in 20th-century Ireland. Though born in London to an English family with no Irish connections, he emigrated to Ireland in early adulthood, changed his name, invented an Irish ancestry, and remained based there for the rest of his life, successfully maintaining a fabricated identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.
Odd Man Out is a 1947 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, and starring James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack, and Kathleen Ryan. Set in Belfast, Northern Ireland, it follows a wounded Nationalist leader who attempts to evade police in the aftermath of a robbery. It is based on the 1945 novel of the same name by F. L. Green.
Paul Thompson may refer to:
Paul Rotha was a British documentary film-maker, film historian and critic.
Wolfgang Suschitzky, BSC, was an Austrian-born British documentary photographer, as well as a cinematographer perhaps best known for his collaboration with Paul Rotha in the 1940s and his work on Mike Hodges' 1971 film Get Carter.
Peter Suschitzky, A.S.C. is a British cinematographer and photographer. Among his most known works as director of photography are The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Empire Strikes Back, and Mars Attacks! and the later films of David Cronenberg. Suschitzky succeeded Mark Irwin as Cronenberg's regular cinematographer when Irwin left during the pre-production of Dead Ringers (1988), and has been the cinematographer for all of Cronenberg's films since, with the exception of Crimes of the Future (2022). He has also collaborated with directors John Boorman, Ken Russell, Bernard Rose, and Tim Burton.
Sir Arthur Hallam Rice Elton, 10th Baronet was a pioneer of the British documentary film industry.
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict every day and banal activities and experiences.
Ben Keaton is an Irish actor who appeared in ITV soap opera Emmerdale as Jeff Brannigan, and in BBC's Casualty, playing the part of Spencer between 1999 and 2002. He also appeared as Father Austin Purcell in "Think Fast, Father Ted", an episode of the Channel 4 sitcom Father Ted, and had a small part in the British film East is East as a priest.
Talk of a Million is a 1951 British comedy film directed by John Paddy Carstairs, starring Jack Warner, with an early appearance from Sid James.
Patrick Joseph Noel Purcell was a distinguished Irish actor of stage, screen, and television. He appeared in the 1956 film Moby Dick and the 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty.
The World Is Rich is a 1947 British documentary film directed by Paul Rotha about food shortages after World War II. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Cradle of Genius is a 1961 Irish short documentary film directed by Paul Rotha on the history of the Abbey Theatre. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
Realism in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative and supernatural elements. The term is often used interchangeably with naturalism, although these terms are not synonymous. Naturalism, as an idea relating to visual representation in Western art, seeks to depict objects with the least possible amount of distortion and is tied to the development of linear perspective and illusionism in Renaissance Europe. Realism, while predicated upon naturalistic representation and a departure from the idealization of earlier academic art, often refers to a specific art historical movement that originated in France in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1848. With artists like Gustave Courbet capitalizing on the mundane, ugly or sordid, realism was motivated by the renewed interest in the common man and the rise of leftist politics. The realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century.
Kenneth Alwyn Wetherell was a British conductor, composer, and writer. Described by BBC Radio 3 as "one of the great British musical directors", Alwyn was known for his many recordings, including with the London Symphony Orchestra on Decca's first stereophonic recording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. He was also known for his long association with BBC Radio 2's orchestral live music programme Friday Night is Music Night, appearing for thirty years as a conductor and presenter, and for his contribution to British musical theatre as a prolific musical director in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and married the actress Mary Law in 1960. His website and the first volume of his memoirs A Baton in the Ballet and Other Places were both published in 2015. The second volume Is Anyone Watching? was published in 2017.
Ian Niall, born John Kincaid McNeillie, was a writer from Galloway, Scotland. He wrote works under both these names. He was born in Old Kilpatrick, to parents from the Machars in South West Scotland. He moved back to Galloway at 18 months old, and the area formed a basis for his early fiction. In the 1940s he moved to North Wales, where his son, the writer Andrew McNeillie, was born. He died in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, in south-east England.
Air Outpost is a 1937 film produced by documentary maker Paul Rotha focusing on the Imperial Airways 'Empire Route' and highlighting a day at the aerodrome at Sharjah, then one of the Trucial States and now one of the United Arab Emirates. The film was made by Rotha for Strand Films and was one of three commissioned by Imperial Airways to showcase the Empire Route and highlight its efficiency and safety for passengers.
Fred O’Donovan (1884–1952) was an Irish actor, early film maker, theatre manager and pioneer of television drama production. For many years he gave the definitive portrayal of the title character in J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, as well as other prominent roles at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. He was manager of the Abbey for a time, and appeared in and directed films, television, and on the stage in Britain and abroad before becoming a producer/director in the BBC’s fledgling television service both before and after World War II.