John Ford had the knack like no one else of turning his films into poetry. It's visual, expressionistic and above all human poetry, since he had a very delicate understanding of human nature. This most clearly comes forth in his Irish films. His parents were from Ireland, and when he embarks on Irish or related subjects (like Wales) he does it with a very a intimate relationship and touch with his people and story. He makes human nature emerge almost titanically even when it's only about very ordinary people.In this film the so called hero is an extreme antihero. He has and does everything wrong. He is big and superior but only in muscles and size, while his brains are completely lacking - he doesn't know at all what he is doing but acts only on impulse and thus unawares brings his own tragedy.His long and great fall is tremendous. He is the buddy of a freedom fighter, and his one desire is for a certain common lady called Katie, with whom he wants to go to America away from the political disturbances and atrocities going on in Ireland in 1922. Without job and at odds with both the English and his own freedom organization, he desperately clinches at the possibility of getting money quick, by informing on his buddy. Naturally there are consequences.As he is completely irresponsible, he has no idea of what havoc he is causing in putting his own life at risk, which he cares least about of all. He gets his money, but instead of going to Katie and buying his freedom ticket, he wastes it all on a merry-go-round hullabaloo along the pubs of Dublin.Victor McLaglen makes an awesome figure in this tremendous and very Irish drama, that couldn't be more Irish. Carol Reed was much influenced by this film in making his masterpiece "Odd Man Out" twelve years later, and there are many interesting parallels between the films.To this comes the music. In the silents the composers learned the art of making the music enhance the drama of the films, and in this film that art is celebrating triumphs. It's almost as if Max Steiner's music underlines every action and every conversation in the drama.This is the perfect Irish film. That's the least you can say about it.

Dublin, 1922 . Gypo Nolan (Victor McLagen) , a slow-witted Irish pug has been ousted from the rebel organization . He is hungry and attempts to impress his ladylove . When he finds that his equally destitute girlfriend Katie Madden (Margot Grahame) has been reduced to prostitution , he succumbs to temptation and turns his friend Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) in for money to the British authorities for a 20 pound reward . Nolan then feels doom closing in . He also gets his comeuppance from the IRA (whose leader is Preston Foster) . Later on , Gypo gets home Mrs. McPhillip (Una O'Connor) and Mary McPhillip (Heather Angel) .Intense film about loneliness , suspicion , frightening , treason , information ; and including a descriptive, evocative black-and-white cinematography . This is a dramatic film dealing with thought-provoking themes about betrayal , guilt and retribution . John Ford re-made "The Informer" (1929) by Arthur Robinson ; and , obviously, he was influenced by this version . Good acting by Victor Mclagen as a strong but none too bright man who betrays his former comrade , though overacting and bears excessive gesticulation . The day before shooting McLagen's trial scene , he proceeded to go out drinking - which Ford knew he would do - and the next day was forced to film the scene with a terrible hangover, which was just the effect Ford wanted . John Ford had been highly impressed by F.W. Murnau's ¨Sunrise¨ and wanted to bring an element of German Expressionism to this film . As it displays an expressionist cinematography by Joseph M August , plenty if lights and dark , being well showed in the course of one gloomy , foggy night . Interesting screenplay by Dudley Nichols who wrote the script in six days , being based from the story by Liam O'Flaherty .This was the first of RKO's three-picture deal with director John Ford and despite its deserved reputation and multiple Oscars, it was a low budget production . Another reason why RKO was reluctant to make the film was because a version of the story had already been filmed in the UK in 1929 .Initially a box office failure, the film made millions when it was re-released after its multiple wins at the Academy Awards .Shot in 17 days and its production costs came to a mere $243,000 . The picture belongs the Ford's second period -subsequently his silent time-when John Ford (1895-1973) made a rich variety of stories and his reputation rightly rests on his work in the 30s and 1940s, as ¨Grapes of wrath¨ , ¨How green was my valley¨ , ¨Fugitive¨ , ¨They were expendable¨, ¨My darling Clementine¨ and the Cavalry trilogy

The Informer is a lyrical and rather artsy reimagining of Liam O'Flaherty's grim novel of betrayal set during the Irish troubles of the 1920's. Co-producer and director John Ford, co- producer Cliff Reid and screenwriter Dudley Nichols pared down the original considerably and brought out what they saw as its essence – the struggle of one Gypo Nolan with his conscience, fought out not only within his own stunted brain but through interactions with various characters who were also simplified and sanitized, the better to direct our attention to the tormented title character. This modern-day Judas tale retains some of the power of the Biblical antecedent. A desperate former member of a revolutionary organization betrays a fugitive comrade to the police for what seems to him a grand sum of money. The comrade is killed; the informer is paid; the money is worthless the moment he acquires it. The realization of what he has done prompts him to drown his consciousness in liquor and get rid of the ill- gotten gain in whatever haphazard way he can. Representing the slummy underworld of Dublin are stage sets by Van Nest Polglase that suggest drabness, meanness and poverty in a movie studio way. The slum dwellers are presented as alternately rowdy and pious with little in between. Many of the characters in the original novel were so decayed and sordid that mainstream movie studios would not have been able to put them on screen intact. The politics of the organization which the title character betrays are kept nebulous and generic. In the novel it was actually a communist cell within the Irish national movement – but that might have given audiences too much to think about. The character of Dan Gallagher, chief of the local revolutionary group, who investigates whether Gypo is guilty, is played boringly and stiffly by Robert Preston. To be fair, the part is underwritten. Gallagher, a die-hard communist revolutionary who can't quite understand what makes himself tick, is just as complex as Nolan but from page to screen loses his human nature and is reduced to "the handsome romantic love interest" to the sister of the betrayed man. The subsidiary members of the organization are presented in the vein of Hollywood gangster's sidekicks, ciphers with interesting faces instead of full-blown, conflicted individuals whose lives and traits would hold our interest. There is plenty of action, all of it expertly choreographed, to breathe life into what might have otherwise been stagy and static, for there is a great deal of talk in the source material.The title character in the book was damaged goods, ravaged by hunger, bruised and beaten by cops, unwashed, unschooled. As embodied by Victor McLaglen he comes across more like a well-fed dock worker with bad manners. The scenarists try to make up for this whitewashing of the main character by showing him drinking whiskey as if it's Kool Aid and tossing annoying people around, in the manner of the Frankenstein monster, like rag dolls. Both tendencies are in the novel but here they are exaggerated. It is simply impossible to believe that someone could drink so much hard liquor in one night without becoming violently ill or passing out cold. True, he does fall asleep on his girlfriend's floor toward the end, but more in the way of a nap than the kind of blacked-out unconsciousness that should have occurred under the circumstances. As for Katie, the woman in Gypo's life, Margot Grahame is far too scrubbed and attractive for this setting. Her relationship with Gypo is changed from a crude interdependence based on brute survival needs to a more conventional Hollywood loving couple arrangement, which really makes no sense in the context of the narrative. Although prostitution is presented more frankly here than in most movies of the era, it still had to be gauzed over. As the slain fugitive's mother, Una O'Connor is on hand with her trademark howling – a waste of her talents.The Informer was considered very strong stuff back in 1935. It's more of a curiosity today.

Victor McLaglen's performance is one of the finest in film history.I think we can all feel for "Gypo" because we've all struggled with what is right and what isn't and been wrong. This was one of the first art-house pictures to be released by a major American movie studio (RKO Radio Pictures).Joseph H. August's cinematography is at its very best here. However, August's stunning portion was mostly overlooked; he didn't receive the Oscar nomination he rightly deserved.This is a psychological drama, with thought, philosophy, sadness, all conveyed with as little words as possible.