Review: The Informer

Reviewed Work(s): The Informer by John Ford

Review by: Jorge Luis Borges, Gloria Waldman and Ronald Christ
Source: October, Vol. 15 (Winter, 1980), pp. 7-8
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/778445
Accessed: 07-06-2020 23:17 UTC

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 Film Reviews from Sur 7

masquerade. Basically, it is not a

of a romantic work.
Two great scenes elevate the film: the one of a dawn where the splendid
course of the night is epitomized in music; that of the murder, which is indirect
presented to us in the tumult and tempest of the faces.
Excellent actors and photography.

Sur no. 5 (Summer 1932)

The Informer

The Informer. U.S.A., 1935. Director: John Ford. Script: Dudley Nichols,
after the novel by Liam O'Flaherty. Photography: Joseph H. August. RKO-
Radio.

I do not know the popular novel from which this film was taken: a fortuna
fault that has allowed me to follow it without the continual temptation t
superimpose the present showing on the recalled reading in order to test f
coincidences. I have followed it. I judge it one of the best films that this past ye
has offered us. I judge it too memorable not to provoke a discussion and not t
merit a reproach. Various reproaches, really, since it has run the beautiful risk
being entirely satisfactory and, for two or three reasons, has not been.
The first is the excessive motivation for the hero's actions. I understand that
what they are after is verisimilitude, but film directors-and novelists-are in the
habit of forgetting that many justifications (and many circumstantial details) are
counterproductive. Reality is not vague, but our general perception of reality is;
and here lies the danger in overjustifying actions or in inventing numerous
details. In the particular case that I am considering-the man who suddenly
becomes Judas, the man who denounces his friend to the machine guns of the
police as well as to the scourge of death-the erotic motive that is evoked seems, in
some ways, to diminish the felony and its heinous miracle. Infamy committed for
amusement, for the mere brutality of infamy, would have been more artistically
impressive. I also think that it would have been more accurate. (An excellent film,
which is undone by the excessive psychologizing of the motives, is Marcel
L'Herbier's Le Bonheur.)
Clearly, the plurality of motives in itself does not seem bad to me. I admire
the scene where the informer squanders his Judas money because of his triple need
to confuse; to bribe the dreadful friends, who are perhaps his judges and will
finally be his executioners; and to see himself free of those bank notes that
dishonor him.

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 8 OCTOBER

Another we
opening episo
(in the Calif
undeniable t
Francisco, bu
than like an
than univers
sion on Holly
problem of
Austro-Hung
whose only m
fault with it
of the inform
him over to
seems to me less admirable.
In this film, the merits are less subtle than the faults and do not require
emphasizing. Nevertheless, I want one very powerful touch to stand out: the last
grating of his nails on the cornice and the disappearance of his hand when the
dangling man is machine-gunned and falls to the ground. Of the three tragic
unities, two have been: observed: the unities of action and time; the neglect of the
third, that of place, cannot be a cause for complaint. By its very nature, cinematog-
raphy seems to reject that third norm and requires continuous displacements.
(The dangers of dogmatism: the admirable memory of Payment Deferred-divine
justice-alerts me to the mistake of generalizing. In that film, the fact that
everything takes place in one house, almost in one single room, is a fundamental
virtue of the tragedy.)

Sur no. 11 (August 1935)

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