The Informer

The Informer (1929) is one of the finest British films of the 1920s and deserves a place alongside other silent greats such as A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929). Based on Liam O'Flaherty's popular Irish novel (which John Ford famously adapted in 1935), this gripping thriller is set among a group of revolutionaries in the newly independent Ireland of 1922. When one of their number kills the chief of police, he goes on the run. But when he returns to Dublin he is cruelly betrayed by his onetime friend Gypo, who then has to battle his old friends as well as his own mounting guilt.