Portrait of Queenie

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.

From Glasgow or Edinburgh, Scotland may be explored by train or long-distance coach, and this film includes a coach tour from Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye. The route taken meets the Highlands at Killin, and then goes over Rannoch Moor and through Glencoe to Ben Nevis, the entrance to the Great Glen. Here we meet the West Highland railway line, and follow it on its journey through the Bonnie Prince Charlie country to Mallaig. Returning to the Great Glen we rejoin the coach route out through the Glen Foyne and Glen Shiel to the Kyle of Lochalsh, and take the ferry over to Skye.

Three short films from the Fifties, offering an insight into day to day life amongst the beautiful scenery of the Scottish Highlands. 'Heart Is Highland' (1951) calls in on the local gamekeeper, nurse, newspaper editor and bus driver as it tours from Inverness to Kinloch Rannoch. 'Wild Highlands' (1959) discovers the wildlife populating the Ardnamurchan peninsula on the Argyll coast, and 'Highland Journey' (1957) journeys by coach and steam train from Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye.