The gravest sin of all

What I love about Ford is that he never beats around the bush when it comes to motivation. No one-dimensionality. Never. There’s always a strong, moral complexity to the actions of his protagonists. Even when we shouldn’t be sympathizing with a character like Gypo here or Ethan from The Searchers, it’s impossible to deny that these people, due to the pressures from their respective environments, are given every single possible reason to do what they do. And the number one driving force behind this always seems to be love. Gypo’s love for Katie and Ethan’s forbidden love for Martha. Not that that’s a justification by any means, but when you remind yourself how they got in to these situations in the first place, all you can really do is just stare at them with pity rather than contempt.

In The Informer, Gypo grapples with the reality and consequences of what Dante believed to be the gravest sin of all. Betrayal. And what you get out of this film is Ford’s reconstruction of the worlds most notorious betrayal - Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, taking us to Dublin of 1922 during the war for Ireland’s independence. This is a truly underrated Ford. For me, it’s genuinely one of his most complete and perfect studies and it sucks to see that it’s reputation has gone down considering it used to be held in very high regard, winning 4 academy awards, praised by Jean Renoir, critics and topping greatest film lists.