This amazing Oscar winner (4 in total) and John Ford's first Academy Award winner, is simply spellbinding with a pounding score by Max Steiner. Called an Art film, because Ford had very little money to make this great story about guilt and retribution, and greed and stupidity. But what makes this movie such a classic, is the direction and astounding photography and use of fog and lighting, that was so different from the usual American film, and more in the tradition of German expressionism. And the Oscar winning performance by Victor McLaglen as the drunken Gypo is simply unbelievable. Basically the movie takes place in Ireland, and Gypo turns in a friend in the rebel movement to the English to collect 20 pounds to give to his girlfriend. But having all that money, he starts blowing it on an all night drunk and giving it away, while the leaders of the movement are trying to track down the informer. The whole movie is one night in a dark and foggy Ireland, and a cast of characters that are memorable but all along, the whole world of Gypo is closing in on him, both psychologically. If I had to pick maybe three directors to have ALL their movies on a deserted island forever, and nobody elses, John Ford would certainly be one of them. What a truly remarkable movie...
Review of The Informer
