White Heat

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

In later years, James Cagney regarded White Heat with a combination of pride and regret; while satisfied with his own performance, he tended to dismiss the picture as a "cheap melodrama." Seen today, White Heat stands as one of the classic crime films of the 1940s, containing perhaps Cagney's best bad-guy portrayal. The star plays criminal mastermind Cody Jarrett, a mother-dominated psychotic who dreams of being on "top of the world." Inadvertently leaving clues behind after a railroad heist, Jarrett becomes the target of the feds, who send an undercover agent (played by Edmond O'Brien) to infiltrate the Jarrett gang. While Jarrett sits in prison on a deliberately trumped-up charge (he confesses to one crime to provide himself an alibi for the railroad robbery), he befriends O'Brien, who poses as a hero-worshipping hood who's always wanted to work with Jarrett. Busting out of prison with O'Brien, Jarrett regroups his gang to mastermind a "Trojan horse" armored-car robbery. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Screen: Black and White
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Features:
  • cc
  • Leonard Maltin hosts Warner Night at the Movies 1949 with newsreel, comedy short So You Think You're Not Guilty, cartoon Homeless Hare and theatrical trailers
  • New featurette White Heat: Top of the World
  • Commentary by film historian Dr. Drew Casper
  • Subtitles: English, Francais & Espanol

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Story - 1949 (Virginia Kellogg)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       James Cagney - Arthur Cody Jarrett
       Virginia Mayo - Verna Jarrett
       Edmond O'Brien - Hank Fallon/Vic Pardo
       Steve Cochran - Big Ed Sommers
       Margaret Wycherly - Ma Jarrett
       John Archer - Phillip Evans
       Wally Cassell - Giovanni Cotton Valetti
       Mickey Knox - Het Kohler
       Ian MacDonald - Bo Creel
       Fred Clark - Daniel Winston, the Trader
       G. Pat Collins - The Reader
       Paul Guilfoyle - Roy Parker
       Fred Coby - Happy Taylor
       Ford Rainey - Zuckie Hommell
       Robert Osterloh - Tommy Ryley
       Art Foster - Guard

• Director:

  Raoul Walsh

• Producer:

  Louis Edelman

• Screenwriter:

  Ivan Goff, Virginia Kellogg, Ben Roberts

• Cinematographer:

  Sidney Hickox

• Composer (Music Score):

  Max Steiner

• Editor:

  Owen Marks, Murray Cutter

• Art Director:

  Edward Carrere, Fred MacLean

• Set Designer:

  Fred MacLean

• Costume Designer:

  Leah Rhoads

• Makeup:

  Perc Westmore

• Special Effects:

  Roy Davidson, H.F. Koenekamp

• First Assistant Director:

  Russell Saunders

REVIEW:

• James Cagney made his name on screen as a criminal, and he gave his last truly great outlaw performance in White Heat, which may well be the most intelligent and striking work of his career. While Cagney always knew how to lend his characters a charismatic menace, his Cody Jarrett in White Heat is both menacing and uncomfortably bizarre. Given to strange semi-epileptic seizures, sudden bursts of horrible violence, and a bizarre attachment to his mother that stops just short of incest, Cody represents the criminal as head case, at once fascinating and disturbingly unstable. Cagney manages to lend Cody just enough of his traditional tough-talking, wise guy veneer that he seems like a conventional screen criminal at first, but it doesn't take long for Cody to reveal himself as a full-blown psychotic, and the perversely self-immolating "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" finale is only the most spectacular symptom of his madness. Raoul Walsh's direction is hardly as audacious as Cagney's performance, but it is crisp, efficient, and briskly paced, and in a way Cagney's portrayal may well be all the more effective in this context. While White Heat's narrative often seems like the traditional story of a charismatic bad guy who will be forced to pay for his crimes in the last reel, it instead houses a different and most puzzling sort of villain, who paved the way for the stranger, more brutal outlaws who would dominate crime cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi