The Informer (1935)

(Dublin, Ireland; 1922)
IMDb

Before he was an endearing caricature of himself in John Ford movies of the 1950's, Victor McLaglen was a surprisingly successful player in John Ford movies of the 1930's. The gruff character actor was even the unlikely recipient of a best actor Academy Award, for his performance as Gypo Nolan, a drunken, cowardly, ex-agent of the Sinn Fein. Having been kicked out of the organization because he could not bring himself to kill a prisoner, Gypo takes to the streets, a pathetic, talentless figure, begging and borrowing to survive. When he finds his girl friend on the edge of prostitution, and has an opportunity to turn in an old friend, beloved resistance leader Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) to the British, he does so. Gypo however is overcome by guilt when Frankie is killed while evading arrest, resulting in the six hours of heavy boozing that constitute the bulk of the film. Fortunately we don't see all six hours, but it almost feels like we do. While the performances are mostly good (though at a few points kind of strained), and the camera work frankly fantastic, in a 'shadow and fog', heavily German influenced kind of way, the movie just felt over-long. It's possible I'm just not appreciating Fords point here, he wants it to seem like one long, awful night, in the life of a rather pathetic man, but I wound up longing for some tightening of pace. The movie is still an important achievement though, one of the few "art house films" to ever come out of RKO. A clip from the movie can be briefly seen in Scorsese's The Departed, which explores similar themes of deception. Know what your in for if you rent this one.