P.S. re: From What Makes Sammy Run? to The Informer.
Thanks to Netflix, I was able to see the movie that Budd Schulberg gave such big love to in the pages of his first novel, What Makes Sammy Run?: the 1935 RKO release of The Informer, which won Oscars for its director (John Ford), its leading man (Victor McLaglen), its screenwriter (Dudley Nichols, who was the first person to decline an Oscar; although, according to the Internet Movie Database, "Academy records show that Dudley was in possession of an Oscar statuette by 1949"), and its composer (Max Steiner). The DVD was of such poor quality that I practically had to marinate it in window cleaner; even so, I think there were five or ten minutes that were unplayable.
The movie is based on the 1925 novel of the same name by Liam O'Flaherty (who was a cousin of John Ford's), and is set in the Irish Civil War of 1922-23: an ex-member of the IRA, a drunken blowhard named Gypo Nolan (McLaglen) who, in his desire to make some fast money to take himself and his prostitute girlfriend Katie (Margot Grahame) to America, rats out his fugitive friend Frankie (Wallace Ford: Freaks, The Mummy's Hand, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, T-Men) to the occupying British army, only to be pursued by his own guilty conscience and his former IRA commander, Dan Gallagher (Preston Foster). Also yearning for "closure" are Una O'Connor as Frankie's mum and Heather Angel as his sis, the latter of whom just happens to be engaged to Gallagher.
While The Informer is quite an eye-opener for a John Ford movie -- cramped, fogbound and nerve-wracking -- it's not nearly as fantastic a movie as Schulberg's good characters, Al Manheim and Kit Sargent, think it is. In particular, the ending, with its explicit parallels of the loutish Gypo with Jesus, the hokey scene of Gypo's redemption, Una O'Connor standing in as Mary (Una O'Connor, no less!, who is more familiar to me in comedic character roles in such movies as The Invisible Man [1933], The Bride of Frankenstein [1935] and The Sea Hawk [1940]) at an impromptu metaphorical pieta, and McLaglen's Gypo -- Victor McLaglen! -- striking a Jesus Christ pose before collapsing, totally derailed what had heretofore been a nice early film noir, in an attempt at making it an uplifting allegory of the struggle of (Northern) Ireland against the bloody bastard Brits.
Precious little time is given to sketching in the background of the conflict; the assumption that the British are bad and the Irish are good is taken for granted, and the only divide shown amongst the Irish themselves is one between the Catholics and Protestants, and this one is very hazily delineated. A little more emphasis on this and a little less on Gypo's carousing, blustering, and incompetent lying would've given more depth to the movie, and perhaps made Schulberg's regard for it more understandable. As it is, The Informer isn't a bad character study of the last night of someone totally out of his depth, and it's a good example of how to say more in a movie with silences and a terrific primer on how to shoot a moody and brooding b&w movie on a minimal budget; but as far as great humanist movies of the 1930s go, I'd hand the crown to the 1932 I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, for all of its creakiness, flat dialogue, melodrama, and a far too trusting hero. Frankly, I'm surprised that it didn't rate even a passing mention in What Makes Sammy Run?
The movie is based on the 1925 novel of the same name by Liam O'Flaherty (who was a cousin of John Ford's), and is set in the Irish Civil War of 1922-23: an ex-member of the IRA, a drunken blowhard named Gypo Nolan (McLaglen) who, in his desire to make some fast money to take himself and his prostitute girlfriend Katie (Margot Grahame) to America, rats out his fugitive friend Frankie (Wallace Ford: Freaks, The Mummy's Hand, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, T-Men) to the occupying British army, only to be pursued by his own guilty conscience and his former IRA commander, Dan Gallagher (Preston Foster). Also yearning for "closure" are Una O'Connor as Frankie's mum and Heather Angel as his sis, the latter of whom just happens to be engaged to Gallagher.
While The Informer is quite an eye-opener for a John Ford movie -- cramped, fogbound and nerve-wracking -- it's not nearly as fantastic a movie as Schulberg's good characters, Al Manheim and Kit Sargent, think it is. In particular, the ending, with its explicit parallels of the loutish Gypo with Jesus, the hokey scene of Gypo's redemption, Una O'Connor standing in as Mary (Una O'Connor, no less!, who is more familiar to me in comedic character roles in such movies as The Invisible Man [1933], The Bride of Frankenstein [1935] and The Sea Hawk [1940]) at an impromptu metaphorical pieta, and McLaglen's Gypo -- Victor McLaglen! -- striking a Jesus Christ pose before collapsing, totally derailed what had heretofore been a nice early film noir, in an attempt at making it an uplifting allegory of the struggle of (Northern) Ireland against the bloody bastard Brits.
Precious little time is given to sketching in the background of the conflict; the assumption that the British are bad and the Irish are good is taken for granted, and the only divide shown amongst the Irish themselves is one between the Catholics and Protestants, and this one is very hazily delineated. A little more emphasis on this and a little less on Gypo's carousing, blustering, and incompetent lying would've given more depth to the movie, and perhaps made Schulberg's regard for it more understandable. As it is, The Informer isn't a bad character study of the last night of someone totally out of his depth, and it's a good example of how to say more in a movie with silences and a terrific primer on how to shoot a moody and brooding b&w movie on a minimal budget; but as far as great humanist movies of the 1930s go, I'd hand the crown to the 1932 I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, for all of its creakiness, flat dialogue, melodrama, and a far too trusting hero. Frankly, I'm surprised that it didn't rate even a passing mention in What Makes Sammy Run?