L'enfer est à lui

The old saying, "They don't make 'em like they used to" fits this film to a T. Every other crazed-killer-goes-on-a-rampage movie ever made pales next to it. This is the best performance of Cagney's career (although, astoundingly enough, he didn't think much of the picture or his work in it, dismissing it as "just another gangster flicker"). Only Cagney could take a character like Cody Jarrett, a snarling, murderous monster with a mother fixation--someone you KNOW is going to get his at the end--and still almost make you wish he gets away. The film is one taut nerve from beginning to end. There's not a wasted moment in it; it starts out at full blast with the daring robbery of a mail train barreling through a mountain pass and doesn't let up. Performances are universally top-notch, from the stars on down to the extras. Far and away the finest film of director Raoul Walsh's long and distinguished career, this movie can take its place as not only the best gangster film ever made, but as one of the best films ever made, period.

Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) is the ruthless, deranged leader of a criminal gang. Although married to Verna (Virginia Mayo), Jarrett is overly attached to his equally crooked and determined mother, "Ma" Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly), his only real confidante.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it "the acme of the gangster-prison film" and praised its "thermal intensity". Tim Dirks on the website Filmsite.org writes that the film may have also inspired many other successful films.

Bottom line: can James Cagney make a bad gangster film? I think not. The only way you can make a gangster film better than a Cagney film, is by having one with Cagney, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson. But that is just not going to happen.

White Heat" shows the influence of film noir that was so popular in the 40's an 50's. Here, Cagney's gangster persona has come full circle back to the viciousness of Tom Powers in "Public Enemy". The big difference is that in this film Cagney's mother is no cream puff. She is, in fact, probably a bigger criminal in thought if not in deed than Cagney's Cody Jarrett.

This late entry into Cagney's gangster filmology shows technology and thus the law gaining on the criminal, with electronic gadgets and undercover lawmen with college degrees in psychology replacing the determined hard-boiled detectives and beat cops of the past. It very much looks forward to the Dragnet series that is to emerge in the 50's.

Virginia Mayo plays Verna, the fur coat loving unfaithful wife to Cagney's psychopathic criminal character Cody Jarrett. She has the hots for a member of Cody's gang, Big Ed (Steve Cochran). Even with his dark menacing presence, Cochran acts like a scared rabbit at the idea of dealing with Cody's wrath - Cagney has that much screen presence here. Edmund O'Brien is great as the undercover cop who has to stay on his toes to keep Cody believing he is on his side and win his confidence. Anything less than a convincing performance would be deadly. O'Brien always impressed me as someone who, like Cagney, could play either a guy with a white or black hat, depending on what the role called for.

Best scene without giving away the ending. Cody chewing on a chicken leg asking a guy in the trunk of the car how he's doing. When he complains it is stuffy Cody pumps the trunk full of lead. He now has the air he needs, not that he is in any condition to breathe anymore.

If you like James Cagney and you like the film noirs of the late 1940s, well, it doesn't get much better than this.

Cagney, who was always great at playing wild gangsters, makes this film interesting all the way through its two hours. Despite being a half-century old, he was still not far from being at the top of his game. His character, Cody Jarrett, is one of the most famous of the many he portrayed on film, which is saying a lot.

Who could sit on his mother's lap and still look like a tough guy? Not many, but Cagney pulled it off here with his tough mama, played really well by Margaret Wycherly. This was a new type of role for Wycherly, who was used to doing Shakespeare. You wouldn't know it from this "Ma Jarrett" role!

The "hoods" in here are all realistic tough guys and gals. Cagney's two-faced wife is played well by Virginia Mayo, who plays the typical (for this genre) floozy blonde whom you can trust about as far as you can throw.

The final scene - "Top Of World, Ma!" - is one of the most famous in all of film history. It's nice to see a nice print of this out on DVD now and some of the features are very informative. Included is an interview with Mayo, who still looks pretty good for an old lady!

Cagney's ability to shock is constant and each new gangster he creates shows a new facet of the psychopathic mind. White heat is the perfect antidote to the earlier movies- the structure where good triumphs in the last reel is still there but the killer, out of control is far less romanticised- if only current directors could develop this message. Cody Jarrett is the product of an over protective mother and thug father in the classic pattern. His whole view of the world is simplistic without subtlety or shade. Like all people of his type his self-confidence betrays him because he sees other people as stereotypes and while he has insight into the sorts of people who form his support network, he, very unwisely, dismisses the intelligence of the opposition. Like all gangsters, he has very little grasp of the outside world- throughout the film he is trapped in boxes, just like the man he kills in the boot of his car. Cagney's portrayal is his greatest role- his avoidance of pathos and his refusal to bend emotionally mean that we are never invited to pity him- wherever there seems to be a point of access for the audience he delivers the lines with a flatness which denies us sympathy. His maudlin obsession with his mother invites us to loathe his infantile mental paralysis.

Not enough comments praise the real co-star: Margaret Wycherley. She is a sinister mother who can handle the police and the gang and Cody's wife. Her world-weary cynicism, her obsession with her son delivered in the same dead-pan style is such a total antithesis to the usual hollywood 'caring parent' model that she raises the character to the level of an Empress Livia or an Agrippina. The final scene works on multiple levels- the good-guy cannot easily destroy the villain- does the world blow up in Cody's face or are we being told that the Jarretts of the world will dominate until they bring the universe to destruction? A film which still demands analysis and does more to reveal the nature of criminal amorality than anything Tarrantino or Scorsese could produce- The latter types of director are too caught up in the 'romance' of the villainous life- they need to develop Raoul Walsh's objectivity and Cagney's penetration. It is Cagney's unequivocal hatred of the character he's portraying and the personal honesty which allows him to objectify both the character he is playing and himself as an actor that makes the whole thing work. The crude method actors we're stuck with today could learn a lot from his Cody Jarrett!