--- title: "The Informer" year: 1935 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-informer" fi1m_score: 73 critics_score: 76 critics_reviews: 7 published: "2026-09-19T22:53:22.044029+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T22:53:22.494699+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Informer (1935) Directed by John Ford · 1h 31m · MPA NR · Crime, Drama **Fi1m score: 73** · Critics 76 from 7 reviews *In a sentence:* A man sells his friend for the boat fare and spends the night trying to drink the evidence > Ford’s fog-bound Dublin and Victor McLaglen’s slow, frightened face are as good as their reputation. The trouble is Max Steiner’s score and Dudley Nichols’s script, which keep saying out loud what the picture has already shown. ## Synopsis Dublin, 1922. Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen), a big, slow former member of the organisation, has been thrown out for disobeying an order and walks the foggy streets with nothing in his pockets. His girl, Katie Madden (Margot Grahame), has taken to the street to eat. A poster offers twenty pounds for Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford), a wanted man and Gypo’s friend, who has slipped back into the city to see his mother (Una O’Connor) and his sister Mary (Heather Angel). A shipping company poster offers passage to America for ten pounds a head. Gypo goes to the barracks. When Frankie is shot in the raid that follows, the commandant Dan Gallagher (Preston Foster) orders an inquiry to find the informer, and Gypo has one night and twenty pounds to get through. ## Review Dublin, 1922, a night of fog. Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) has been thrown out of the organisation for failing to shoot a man, and he has nothing: no work, no money, and a girl, Katie Madden (Margot Grahame), who has been driven onto the street. His friend Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) has a price of twenty pounds on his head. A shipping poster offers passage to America at ten pounds a head. Gypo can do that sum, and the film, adapted by Dudley Nichols from Liam O’Flaherty’s novel, is about what happens to him in the hours after he does it. John Ford was reaching for something here that he did not often reach for, and it shows in every frame. Almost the whole film takes place in one night, on studio streets, in a fog that Joseph H. August lights from behind so that people arrive as shadows before they arrive as faces. The wanted poster tears loose from a wall and follows Gypo down the street, wrapping itself round his legs. A blind man (D’Arcy Corrigan) stands under a lamp outside the barracks as Gypo comes out with the money. It looks like a German silent, and it is meant to. McLaglen is the reason the film still holds. Gypo is a big man with a slow mind, and McLaglen plays him with his whole body, shoulders forward, hands hanging, a face that takes several seconds to catch up with what it has just heard. The scene in the barracks got at us more than we expected: an officer counts out the notes and pushes them across with his stick rather than touch the man, and McLaglen does nothing at all for a long moment, then picks them up like something hot. Nobody says a word about shame. Nobody needs to. The rest of the cast are good in a smaller way. Grahame gives Katie a tired warmth that survives the dialogue. Heather Angel, as Frankie’s sister Mary, and Una O’Connor, as his mother, have the film’s quietest scenes and play them without weeping at us. J. M. Kerrigan is a pleasure as Terry, the sponger who attaches himself to Gypo the moment there is money about, and Donald Meek does a great deal with a small frightened tailor. Preston Foster, as the commandant Dan Gallagher, is the weak spot, upright and handsome and dull, a speech in a trench coat. The trouble is that Ford does not trust his pictures, or was not allowed to. Max Steiner’s score follows Gypo down every street, a theme for each step and a chord for each glance, and by the halfway mark we were tired of being told where to look. Nichols’s script does the same in words. The religious business, the crucifix on the wall, the church, the opening text about Judas and his thirty pieces of silver, is laid on with a trowel, and Ford lingers on it every time. Walter Plunkett’s costumes are better judged: Gypo’s cap and split jacket, Katie’s thin coat, the trench coats and soft hats of the men who come looking for him. George Hively’s editing is fast where it needs to be, in the raid that goes out of a window and over the roofs, and slow where it should be, at the court of inquiry in a cellar, which Ford stages as a long, patient trap. Ford would go on to [*Stagecoach*](https://film.one/film/stagecoach) and *The Grapes of Wrath*, films that hide their craft, and this is the one where he wanted you to see it. That is why some critics now find it heavy, and we can see their point. At 91 minutes it does not waste your evening. Watch it late, with the lights off and the volume a notch lower than usual, which is the only way we know to argue with Steiner. *Fi1m score 73, published 19 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics admire The Informer, and the praise gathers around two things: Victor McLaglen as Gypo and the look of John Ford’s Dublin. The 1935 reviews treat McLaglen’s blundering, pathetic betrayer as the film’s centre and credit the picture with a psychological seriousness rare in the early talkies. Later writers keep returning to the imagery instead: fog-shrouded streets, shadowy tenements, snatches of hymn and song drifting through the night. Nearly everyone reaches for the word Expressionist. The reservations come from the later reviews and cluster around the script and the direction. Empire finds the writing has not aged well and the ominous, religious elements laid on too thick; Film Comment is warmer but holds the film at arm’s length as a moody nocturne. Time Out is the outright dissenter, finding it heavy-handed, humourless and patronising, with only the camerawork worth saving. The spread is wide, and it runs along the decades: the closer a critic sits to 1935, the higher the score. ### Reviews we read (7) - **The New Yorker** (90/100, inferred): Any picture so perfected advances a serious concern for the cinema through its sure progress and consistent development. Victor McLaglen delivers a magnificent performance as Gypo, clarifying the betrayal with sympathy amid the tense Sinn Fein Dublin atmosphere. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1935/05/18/grateful-notes-of-praise) - **The New York Times** (90/100, inferred): The Music Hall presents Victor McLaglen in the film version of Liam O'Flaherty's 'The Informer.' It stands out as one of the remarkable talking films for its psychological study and skillful vignette of Irish revolutionary realities. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1935/05/10/archives/the-music-hall-presents-victor-mclaglen-in-a-film-version-of-liam.html) - **Variety** (90/100, inferred): The film is forcefully and intelligently written, directed and acted. It excels through Victor McLaglen's faithful characterization of the blundering, pathetic betrayer Gypo, guided by John Ford's direction. [Read](https://variety.com/1934/film/reviews/the-informer-1200410957/) - **Empire**, Kim Newman (70/100, inferred): The critic sees the film as a heavily allegorical tale of Irish rebellion that falls into the category of Ford's Oscar-winning but now lesser-regarded works. It praises the Expressionist atmosphere, foggy Dublin visuals, and McLaglen's strong screen presence in the chase scenes while noting the script has not aged well and there is an overdose of the ominous and religious elements. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/informer-review/) - **Film Comment** (70/100, inferred): The piece discusses Ford's 1935 adaptation of Liam O'Flaherty's novel as a grim, moody, nocturnal reverie set in revolutionary Dublin, balancing empathy for the traitor with faith in the betrayed cause. It singles out the film's indelible, expressionist imagery of fog-shrouded streets, shadowy tenements, and floating snatches of songs and hymns. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/rep-diary-ford-and-ireland/) - **Time Out**, TCh (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the film heavy-handed, humourless and patronising, despite its Oscar wins and contemporary acclaim. Only the expressionist camerawork stands out amid the over-emphatic direction, script and score. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-informer) - **Collider**, Liam Gaughan (85/100, inferred): The critic calls The Informer a brilliant exercise in tension and an edgy study in morality and guilt that was radically ahead of its time. It has aged very well as a thought-provoking examination of the ramifications of betrayal and remorse. [Read](https://collider.com/john-ford-the-informer/) ## Details - **Director:** John Ford - **Director:** John Ford - **Screenplay:** Dudley Nichols - **Cinematography:** Joseph H. August - **Editor:** George Hively - **Music:** Max Steiner - **Costume design:** Walter Plunkett - **Producer:** John Ford - **Cast:** Victor McLaglen as Gypo Nolan; Heather Angel as Mary McPhillip; Preston Foster as Dan Gallagher; Margot Grahame as Katie Madden; Wallace Ford as Frankie McPhillip; Una O'Connor as Mrs. McPhillip; J. M. Kerrigan as Terry; Joe Sawyer as Bartly Mulholland - **Runtime:** 1h 31m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 9 May 1935 - **Genres:** Crime, Drama - **Budget:** $243,000 - **Box office:** $950,000 ## Where to watch in the US - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-19.* Also available in: CA, ES, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1936: Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Actor (won); Best Director (won); Best Score, Adaptation or Treatment (won); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (won) - National Board of Review Award for Best Film 1935: National Board of Review Award for Best Film (won) ## If you liked this - *Odd Man Out* (1947): Carol Reed’s Belfast night, another wounded man loose in a city that wants him found - *M* (1931), Fi1m 94: Lang’s hunted man and a city closing in, with the same shadows and less sermon — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/m.md) - *Le Doulos* (1962): Melville’s Paris in hats and rain; who informed on whom is the whole game - *On the Waterfront* (1954), Fi1m 89: Brando’s slow dockworker weighs the cost of talking; the guilt is quieter here — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/on-the-waterfront.md) - *The Wind That Shakes the Barley* (2006): Loach on the same war, daylight and argument instead of fog and symbols --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-informer