The Informer : A Ford Crucible
By Blake Lucas

Joe Sawyer, Una O'Connor, Heather Angel, and Victor McLaglen in The Informer

Today, few critics, students or admirers of John Ford will defend The Informer (1935), and in truth, the film is more often cited negatively, to show by contrast to its aesthetic strategies Ford's real strengths. It wasn't always this way. The economically made film was a prestigious success in its day, winning awards, quickly achieving the status of a classic, and greatly enhancing Ford's growing reputation. There's no doubt that the "art movie" quality it has partly accounted for this, and ironically, this seems to be the very same thing that seems now to be most held against it. This is not the kind of film that present Fordians want from Ford.

I believe the critical history is well-known, and in taking up for this work, I don't want to linger on it too much. The main problem people have seems to be with what Peter Bogdanovich in his book-length interview called "calculated artistry." A second and related one is an answer Bogdanovich got out of Ford himself when he asked him about the film — "It lacks humor." Both of these things are undeniably true. Whether or not they are actual negatives, as opposed to theoretical ones, depends on the extent to which the context of these observations is broadened as well as one's actual experience in watching the film.

I'll take up the humor issue first, as it's straightforward and easy to address and also affords an opportunity to briefly refer to the arc of the simple story adapted from Liam O'Flaherty's novel, set in Dublin in 1922 during the Sinn Fein Rebellion, and involving the IRA and the Black and Tan occupiers, oppression and grinding poverty, but focused during a single night on one man, Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen), who informs on his best friend, Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford), for a reward and then suffers the consequences of this ill-considered action. Most Ford films are more expansive in time and space, and however serious they may be, they afford opportunities for contrasting moods, and may be humorous, charming, and so many things that The Informer is not and rightly does not even try to be. More logically, it follows a path of keeping its narrative concise and sustaining tension, as one surely knows where it will end as narrative but not exactly how.

As reasonable as this approach is — and it has been used many times by many different directors who have been lauded for doing what Ford does here — it's still taken as a liability by people who love Ford simply because they know what he does in so many other works. After all, weren't Ford's other 1935 films, The Whole Town's Talking and Steamboat Round the Bend — so rich in qualities for which Ford is now admired — less appreciated than this one in their time? I care enough about Ford's gift for shifting moods and for blending comedy and drama to be keenly sympathetic to this view, and I too love both those films, especially the second. But it seems wrong to reject a work on principle because it doesn't have humor, and looking to Ford himself as an authority on the point is a real mistake: haven't we learned by now to trust very little in what he said at any given time? Ford is to be understood through his work; everything is there if we are patient enough in coming to understand it, and it is the only sure way to understand him. As for humor, always a virtue in Ford or anyone else, it is not essential in all works of art; think of paintings or pieces of music that beautifully create a single mood or feeling and sustain it. There is no reason why a film cannot be like this, too; the films of Robert Bresson have precious little humor that I've ever discovered, yet few critics regard them negatively for that reason. It seems fair that Ford too should be allowed a film of narrower mood if it has compensating virtues.

Much the same argument applies to the nature of Ford's art more generally. It is again a question of whether there is one "true" Ford style against which all his films should be measured. The idea of "calculated artistry" could easily be interchangeable (even if it's not intended to be) with "conscious artistry." Isn't all art conscious and shouldn't it be, even in encouraging the unconscious to play its own part? Part of an artist's achievement can be to create simplicity, and Ford is now much praised for his gift for doing this, but that doesn't mean the apparent spontaneity and ease of effect really just happen. At the same time, it is difficult to think of a Ford film that does not also show a conscious, purposeful and deliberative artist at work. One way this shows in many of the beloved films of postwar Ford — some of the Westerns come readily to mind — is in his willingness to cut highly artificial, studio-made shots into scenes mostly shot on location, which have a naturalistic expansiveness; it never seems like a compromise, but rather that Ford's view of the relationship between stylized images and the natural world is a very sophisticated one. In that context, The Informer is a film of an artist in evolution, though already mature, initially influenced by Griffith but from the end of the silent era up to this film and even, very often though in different ways, in later films as well, by Murnau, who had carried some of the aesthetic currents of German Expressionism to Hollywood for Sunrise (1927). It's important to stress, though, that The Informer does not look or feel like any Murnau film or any German Expressionist film, even if has some affinities. Studio-bound though it may be, it is partly defined by the kind of acting one always associates with Ford, which produces a rich tension to the more artificial aspects by a wealth of behavioral detail that gives an intensely realistic impression. It is a kind of acting that grounds the images in the feeling of a real world, so freeing Ford's poetic side.

The opening section, twenty minutes long, concisely patterns the ideas of the film, visually as well as dramatically, and the key relationships that animate it and that give Gypo force as an individual character. Intriguingly, elements of the film that have drawn much negative criticism also come into play here (the poster, the music) and I want to indicate some things about these elements, as I believe a fair reading will show that although they are weaknesses at times and in some ways, their greater strength makes up for it.

Gypo crosses a street to attend Frankie's wake

First, one quickly becomes aware that the film seems confined to one large soundstage, in which artfully constructed but not very elaborate sets represent Dublin. Much of the action takes place on the streets, suffused with fog, but even more with light — light from the windows and the lamps, manipulated to make the characters into shadows and silhouettes or to illuminate them in very specific ways. Master cinematographer Joseph August, favored on other Ford films too, and not always asked to do the same thing (compare They Were Expendable [1945]), beautifully fulfills this aesthetic conception. The streets and rooms expressively pass as real, but the light one sees is in truth highly stylized and abstractly beautiful. Free of naturalism, it is manipulated in such a way as to take us to the deeper truth. It's not uncharacteristic for a Ford film to be so defined, and even if it may be more subtle in some films, the light within the images has never been more perfectly attuned to a film's intentions. In a real sense, the light is the film.

In the opening shot (following the credits sequence), Gypo is first seen as an approaching shadow reflected against a wall and then comes into view as a person as he is tracked left to right along the street until, at the end of this opening shot, he stops in front of the wanted poster of Frankie which we see as he does. Already, before a cut has been made, Ford has suggested that both the shadow self (who will unthinkingly betray a friend) and the individual man, beleaguered and despondent but certainly not evil, are one, and when Ford deals with the poster following the cut, he achieves a similar highly expressive effect. The overused poster does indeed have its weak moments in the film, but this first appearance is brilliant. Within its frame, Gypo and Frankie are seen together in happier days of comradeship, confirming all we need to know about their relationship. We would know it anyway from Gypo's gesture and expression when he sees the poster and from his act of tearing it down, but the dramatic turn that animates the whole film is encapsulated as the image of the two men that appears above the reward notice, and the intimation of Gypo's betrayal of Frankie is felt and even announced, piercingly, at the exact same moment that their friendship is evoked.

The immediately following scene of Gypo stopping to listen to a street singer (Dennis O'Dea) singing the beautiful song "The Rose of Tralee" (searched by the Black and Tans before he has finished) does have a Fordian contrast to the previous one, and tellingly, it is just about all Ford allows — though a moment can always be enough in Ford — to convey to us there is some genuine tenderness and inwardness inside a man who is so often rough and boisterous and so unable even to think for himself without Frankie around. It would be worth recalling this moment in any event because Bogdanovich excerpted it in proximity to another song sequence ("My Gal is Purple" in Rio Grande [1950]) in his film Directed by John Ford (1971), the later film — and scene — chosen to represent the mature artistry of Ford in comparison to the earlier one. In truth the two scenes have much in common, as they both involve songs supporting images that show the sensitivity and yearning of a male protagonist and evoke the relationship of the man to an offscreen woman, and it could be argued that the one in Rio Grande is actually the more abstract and more conspicuously artistic of the two. "The Rose of Tralee" scene is staged and filmed fairly simply, if quite beautifully, with Gypo leaning meditatively against a wagon, a little apart from others gathered, and, by contrast with Rio Grande, where the scene gathers emotions of a relationship we already know, this film has not yet even introduced Katie Madden (Margot Grahame), the woman in Gypo's life, so there is an effective mystery to its placement at this early point.

The relationship of song to male/female relationship does become clear, though, as Katie is introduced in the following shot, the first of the next scene and the first in a sequence of three. The first is a close-up of her in a shawl, like a woman emblematic of a humble if proud Irish culture, then following a reverse to Mulligan (Donald Meek), the third shot finds her removing the shawl to reveal the makeup and attire of a streetwalker as the camera expressively pulls back while she moves to encourage Mulligan's interest. The reverberations of this brilliant and very beautiful moment in Ford are myriad; the central place of women in his films is, as so often noted, as keepers of hearth, home and family, yet intriguingly, it is the women who fall out of that paradigm who so often get a deep share of sympathy, invariably so with prostitutes. The scene between Gypo and Katie — the humiliation he feels that the woman he loves and whom he cannot take care of has come to this; his impulsive treatment of Mulligan on account of that; and then her reasonable explanation for her prostitution, her protestation that she loves him even so, and the reference to the £20 needed to get to America — all have resonance beyond the simple dialogue and action. The scene bridges Gypo's first reaction to the wanted poster and his meeting with Frankie that follows; it sets up the decision for the betrayal that we never even see and that he seems to make without deliberation, almost unconsciously.

This is a good place to make an observation about Max Steiner's much-maligned music. It is reproached for undue emphasis — music to match tinkling coins and things like this — but there is actually much less of this in the film than one would think to hear about it. The score is mostly made up of some haunting, interrelated themes, especially the Irish/martial main theme for Gypo that begins the film, and the bluesy counterpoised theme, a very beautiful one, that comes in with Katie in this scene. But Steiner did seem to be asked for some extra emphasis and there is an example here when the first word of spoken dialogue occurs — over five minutes into the film and at a point where its emotions are already strongly at work. Katie says in a plaintive tone, "Gypo," and the music seems to copy her voice saying his name. I wonder if this is really so much a flaw rather than a touch of the operatic, one that goes along with Grahame's highly effective delivery of her lines, which have a palpable emotional reality, together with a musical quality.

The tautness of the opening reels continues through the introduction of Frankie evading the Tans and then encountering Gypo at the Dunboy House. Here we do see an overuse of the superimposed poster, when Gypo can't help seeing it beneath his friend's real face; we would know from Gypo's expression and Frankie's reaction to it that the reward has come to Gypo's mind. In context of the whole, though, occasional lack of faith in the audience to make a connection seems like a very minor flaw — already so much less important than what Ford accomplished with the poster in that first scene (and there is a payoff of the motif to come near the end of the film). It's especially important because this scene is so strong: Ford's direction and the palpable chemistry between the two actors effectively speak volumes of the whole history of their friendship, and the intimation of tragedy to come is ironic in Frankie's affectionate observation that Gypo got into trouble with "the organization" because Frankie was not around to think for him — "I'm your brain." It's true; and if Frankie had not been away on the run for so long, and had been around to think for him, Gypo would surely never have contemplated an act of betrayal like this one that causes Frankie's death.

Gypo (Victor McLaglen) and Frankie (Wallace Ford)

Very quickly and with concise dramatic force, Gypo has now been shown as a man whose two most positive relationships, with the woman he loves and his best friend, have abruptly fallen into the present in a way he naively sees as in conflict and gropes to resolve that conflict and so free himself from this present. It's a doomed act, and it seems that Ford could hardly be more masterful in the parallel scenes of a still, subdued Gypo at Black and Tan headquarters and a forcefully done action scene in which Frankie shoots it out with the Tans at his home while his mother and sister first try to intervene and then can only watch hysterically as he is killed, complete with his fingernails scratching on the window to create the soundtrack moment Ford was justly proud of. The first part is completed as Gypo is paid off (in a contemptuous manner) and let out the back into a striking image which momentarily finds him behind crisscrossing wire, then encountering the blind man (D'Arcy Corrigan), an imposingly severe figure, the severity plainly though effectively putting Gypo face to face with his own "blindness" that has so quickly put the pieces of this tragedy in place, his inability to see the pattern of relationships (and, in the song sequence, the daunting struggle and sadness of life that one must endure to go on) that all of its scenes were there to show him. At the same time, the "blindness" is in contrast to the way the film has at the same time been imposing itself steadily as a work revealing itself in light.

The more attenuated action of the rest of the film may at times seem less inspired, but that's true of many great films. If its elements are initially laid out with clarity and become compelling, one wants to follow the course of the film as it plays out. The lengthy sequences of Gypo drinking and spending money are uncomfortable ones, but they make total sense, even the obsequious hanger-on Terry (J. M. Kerrigan), in fact a convincing and effective character, and it's interesting that he is the film's least sympathetic without doing anything violent or criminal. Cagily, Ford knows that the audience will be depressed to see Gypo virtually throwing away the money he sold out his friend for. But that's the blindness of perceiving things practically. What else can Gypo do? Lurking inside his muddled mind is a better self that is appalled by his act of informing from the moment he does it, a revulsion that is of course brought home by Frankie's death. There's no financial salvation or trip to America to come from the money — Katie knows this as soon as she finds out what happens.

The same intelligent handling marks the more compelling scene of the IRA court, underground, which resembles a famous scene in Fritz Lang's M (1931), of which Ford was doubtless aware, in evoking immense compassion for someone who has done something reprehensible. Gypo is different from Lang's character, though, in being essentially inarticulate: his halting, stumbling defenses followed by his confession are almost poignant, his fear really less than his need to finally have it out in the open. There is a moving simplicity, almost a desire for communion with the others, when he finally asks, with perfect eloquence, "Isn't there a man here that can tell me why I did it?" Also impressive in the scene is the payoff of the Mulligan character, for which anyone should acknowledge at least a touch of subtlety on the part of Ford and screenwriter Dudley Nichols. There is not a single reference or acknowledgement anywhere as to why Gypo grabbed at Mulligan's name when asked for one he might suspect — the audience makes this connection to his brief appearance in Katie's first scene, and even more impressively, Meek's acting easily reconciles the seemingly well-to-do man who could buy a prostitute on the street and a gentle soul with health problems and no malice toward Gypo after the fact.

This is perhaps the place to observe that as is typical of Ford at his best, there are stunningly effective performances under his direction, including at least four that are great. I've already spoken of Grahame, an actress barely known today and not part of Ford's stock company, but from that first image of her there are so many intimations of his mature view of women — one of the great strengths of The Informer — that her presence lifts the film in every moment she is in. Then there's Wallace Ford as Frankie, his presence confined to a few scenes in those crucial first reels. It seems almost amazing that the excellent white-haired, heavy-set character actor we know from so many postwar films could here come over as a genuinely dashing, youthful man and daring IRA hero, but he does. Most important, of course, is McLaglen, an actor whose physicality lends itself to hard-drinking tough guys (and of course the role uses this), but who also had much more range than he is normally allowed to have had, and it all shows here, as he manages to convey to us the moment-by-moment emotional, spiritual and moral disintegration of a human being, and always in the most human way, making Gypo one of cinema's most indelible characters.

It's the fourth standout performance that, along with McLaglen, does most for the longer second part of the film, and he is not introduced until it begins. That's Joe Sawyer (still billed as Joseph Sauers here, but, aware of the impression he made in this film, he changed it by the end of 1935) as IRA man Bartley Mulholland. His strikingly blond, handsome looks, made somewhat forbidding by his active malevolence toward Gypo, evident from their first encounter at the wake (an especially dramatic composition finds him standing over Gypo who sits abjectly on the floor), when he immediately becomes the first one to be suspicious; his seeming determination to reveal the other's guilt; and his rebuffs of every gesture of friendship Gypo makes — all are fascinating. Nothing he ever does can really be seen in negative terms within the context of the situation, and yet the film treats him, memorably, as an antagonist, climaxed by the moment when, inevitably, he is the one to shoot and mortally wound Gypo.

The even greater payoff moments of this longer part of the film bring it back to its sources. First, the now empty space of the poster Gypo tore down: when he escapes from his captors, he comes to this place, though now he is seen to the right of the space on the wall rather than the left, and the poster briefly materializes once more and then disappears. Looking at it, he cries out plaintively, "Frankie!" — the moment is the opposite of that first one. There the emotion was in the abstract memory image superimposed on the poster; now the space is empty, and the emotion has come into the man himself to find articulate voice. Even more powerful is the ending, though I imagine this is the telling point where the film's detractors pull away from the film. For me, Ford's courage to give full force to the emotion in a scene like this is one thing that sets him above most other artists: McLaglen's forceful "Frankie… Frankie, your mother forgives me!" seems to come from the depths of his soul. No less important, any religious symbolism one finds in the image may be overstressed. It makes most sense to see his outstretched arms as gathering up all that light that has made the film so expressive, a light one may now recognize as spiritual.

Of course the film readily opens itself to a Catholic reading, and that's a strength, as motifs of Catholicism characteristically animate drama with great force and link up, as here, with the timeless themes of redemption, reconciliation, and renewal — also leading themes of Ford that play through his work in so many ways that it would be hard to know where to begin to acknowledge all the parallels, except perhaps negatively with The Fugitive (1947), one Ford film that I believe does fail. The Fugitive too wears its conscious artistry on its sleeve, and much more obviously, and it too "lacks humor" and is really more solemn (though Ford does name it as a favorite!) — but the real difference is that although it asks to be taken as a compelling narrative, too, the characters (except for Ward Bond's "El Gringo") never have the human dimension and richness of those in The Informer; they are so manifestly representative archetypes, symbolic of the film's ideas.

Looking one last time at the characters, it's possible to observe just how much the women — Frankie's sister, Mary (Heather Angel), and his mother (Una O'Connor) as well as Katie — are so ahead of the men in compassion, forgiveness, humanistic understanding. In a time when violent retribution, which men have always been so quick to claim as answers to problems, is so much in our consciousness (torture is outside the film, but the possibility lies quietly in its margins), these three characters, suffering no less than the others, win our admiration for seeing more deeply — and in Mary's case it makes up for a few scenes with Dan Gallagher (Preston Foster) that are really the film's only conventional ones. There's no simple male/female duality, though. The men, beginning with Gypo, show a mostly suppressed softer side, and the brief but wonderful scene in which Ford focuses the camera on an anxious Dennis (Gaylord Pendleton), fearful of drawing the short straw that will elect him as Gypo's executioner (of course he draws it), perfectly evokes Gypo's failure to perform a similar task, which led to his being exiled from the organization. The Informer also falls in beautifully among Ford's periodic Irish films — all stylized, though the later ones go to the real place with great effect — which honor long traditions of an older culture as opposed to the newer ones of America, and so help find the balance in his vision, as well as carrying the same range of tone and texture.

Even the most severe shot-by-shot analysis of The Informer would reveal an exceptionally strong work rather than a weak one: it's not perfect (few films are), but, as some things I've noted indicate, it fails only in moments where Ford is not trusting enough of the audience. Ford's collaborators here — among the most important, Nichols, August, Steiner, costume designer Walter Plunkett, some of the actors — are people he relied on to contribute to other of his works as well, and the film plainly meant a great deal to him and he was surely proud of it. I'm not proposing that one need consider this Ford's greatest film, or even, as I do, one of his many masterpieces. But I do believe The Informer deserves at least to regain a positive place in the ongoing discussion of Ford that it has too long been denied. Rather than try to limit the nature of his artistic mastery, it seems more just to allow him the freedom to move through the many different kinds of films he has made, including this powerful and compassionate tragedy, in which light becomes the tangible metaphysic of one corner of his vision of life.

Blake Lucas
© FIPRESCI 2009

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