The Informer
Adapted from Dudley Nichols, from Liam O'Flaherty's novel, directed by John Ford, photographed by Joseph H. August; music by Max Steiner. Produced and distributed by R.K.O.

The Cast
Gypo Nolan..........................................Victor McLaglen
Frankie McPhillip......................................Wallace Ford
Katie................................................Margot Grahame
Dan Gallagher........................................Preston Foster
Mrs. McPhillip........................................Una O'Connor
Mary McPhillip........................................Heather Angel
Terry................................................ J.M. Kerrigan
Rat Mulligan............................................Donald Meek
Mullholland...........................................Joseph Sauers
Tommy Connor....................................... Neil Fitzgerald
Donahue................................................ Leo McCabe
Daly..............................................Gaylord Pendleton
Flynn................................................. Francis Ford
Soldier................................................Dennis O'Day
Aunt Betty................................................May Boley
The Lady.............................................Griselda Harvey

The movies have rarely tried to look at modern Ireland with modern eyes, in spite of the riches of dramatic material to be found there. The reverberations sent through the world by Synge and Joyce and O'Casey have awakened no echoes in California, though in recompense we have been spared the Mother Machree, Macushla Mavourneen kind of thing that might have resulted if Hollywood had ventured timidly into Irish romance. There were some Kelleys paired off with Cohens, a pleasant little vehicle manufactured for bring John McCormack to the screen but remembered, if at all, for bringing Maureen O'Sullivan to America, a husband-wife-lover affair set in a Dublin uprising - these are all the evidence movie makers have given of any interest in the Emerald Isle.

Which is one reason The Informer comes with such novelty and vitality. Another is that Liam O'Flaherty's novels have little in them of the stuff from which ordinary movies are made. Mr. O'Flaherty fights fiercely against having any sentimental and romantic illusions about his country and countrymen: he goes in for bitter realism that seems inspired by something pretty close to hatred, and the Irish traits he delights to picture range all the way from braggart blackguardism to blarneying hypocrisy, with little pity for any but the stupid and bewildered. His books would be a stiff does for the ordinary audience if they were put on the screen in the key he wrote them in.

Dudley Nichols and John Ford have struck a somewhat gentler strain from the harp of old Erin. One with his scenario, the other with his directing, they have made of The Informer something that popular sympathy can more conventionally respond to. The have romanticized the motive for Gypo Nolan's turning informer, making him do it for a girl - as if hunger were not an effective enough reason. All the women in the story have been stereotyped into lay figures used to suggest the usual heart interests of commonplace fiction, and do not count very much. But these little compromises have left intact what is essential to the tragedy of a man who was the victim of his own character.

There is probably no blacker form of sin against one's fellow man, to the Irish, than turning informer, as Gypo Nolan did in the Dublin days of revolt when the Black and Tans tyrannized over the city. An outcast even among the rebels, to gain the twenty pounds reward offered by the British he betrayed his pal Frankie McPhillip, who had been hiding in the wet hills and sneaked into the city on a dark foggy night to steal a quick visit to his mother and sister. By morning the informer was caught, tried and shot.

In the hours from early evening to dawn, in the murk of the Dublin slums, Gypo's inevitable punishment stalks him. Brutal and stupid, a brawny man who always needed his pal Frankie's brains to guide all his actions, he is lost and desperate with Frankie gone. With his pocket full of money he can buy companionship from a crowd of riff-raff who follow him from bar to bar, and he can buy momentary forgetfulness and elation from liquor, even a feeling of goodness by an impulsive gesture of sentimental generosity. But the money, drunkenly scattered here and there, piles up into evidence against him, and at last he has to confront the rebels' tribunal, where his wild and futile lies are worse than a confession.

There is a grim splendor to it, both as a tragedy and as a motion picture. Fundamentally it is honest in intention and sincere in execution. The man's character is truly understood and truly portrayed, with the inevitability coming from its own nature that great tragedy always has to have. The film illustrates powerfully the old dictum that character is destiny. Gypo might have lived a sneaking, sordid life to a dreary old age, drifting to its end with no drama at all, but once his slow wits got the idea of going after that twenty pounds he had to step out of the gutter of aimless futility and fight the consequences of his act, with all that was in him dragged up into the glaring illumination of a final crisis.

The writer of the scenario dealt honestly and ably with the O'Flaherty character, and encompassed it in a framework that follows the best motion picture technique. John Ford has directed it with a fine eye for picture effect, both atmospherically and dramatically. Occasionally he slips into old movie ruts that seem outworn-fade-ins to supply deficiencies in the audience's imagination, for instance, that must seem quaint and unnecessary at best to any alert and audience of today. But subtle and powerfully suggestive is the way he has paralleled the blind twistings of Gypo's inner nature with an exterior presentment of dark foggy streets peopled with dim figures and dimmer shadows, with the action erupting into some place of light and noise whenever Gypo emerges into positive activity. The players, given what the script called on them to do, he has managed well, with much more conspicuous success with the men than with the women. The acutely Mater Dolorosa aspect of Frankie's mother must be held against him - any director who wanted to could surely have subdued her. But Margot Grahame, as Katie, in her earlier scenes, is a real person, not to be blamed for the unfortunate piece of writing that sent her like a blurred carbon-copy of innumerable movie heroines to plead for Gypo's life at the end.

The dominating actor is Victor McLaglen, who shines all the brighter for all the worthless parts he has had to play in the past. He is completely sunk in the sodden body and mind and soul of Gypo Nolan, a creature of the slums pushed on his fumbling way by only the most primitive instincts. Yet, without ever noticeably playing for sympathy, he manages to present a figure that is somehow pitiable. Most of the other men are good, too, with J.M. Kerrigan topping all of them, not merely because he has the only richly authentic brogue in the whole picture, but for his portrait of a grasping Irish toady that for sheer brilliance surpassed even McLaglen's performance.

Pictures like this come rarely, and it will make an interesting test of how justified people are who insist that audiences are eager for better films than producers provide.

- J. S. H.