The Informer
Screening on Film
Directed by John Ford.
With Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster.
US, 1935, 35mm, color, 91 min.
With Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster.
US, 1935, 35mm, color, 91 min.
This was the film that, in his eighteenth year directing, made John Ford famous, winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Screenplay (Dudley Nichols), Best Music (Max Steiner). It’s a still enormously envigorating adaptation of the Liam O’Flaherty novel about a Dublin lowlife, Gippo (Victor McLaglen, another deserved Oscar), who sells out his revolutionary pal to the police for a handful of money, which he promptly drinks away with his pals. The pub-crawling scenes are precious ones, and Ford is effective getting the feel of life among the IRA. This is one of Ford’s most heavily expressionist works, and among the most overtly Catholic.
