White Heat

Rating:
Summary: Cagney Is White Hot!!!
Review: It's about time! I've been waiting for "White Heat" to come out on DVD for years, and now -- on the heels of the RKO film noir boxed set Warner's issued last summer -- "White Heat" is finally being released as part of Warner Bros.'s gangster boxed set, with movies by James Cagney, Bogart and Cagney's rival, "Little Caesar" Edward G. Robinson!

"White Heat" is Raoul Walsh's best movie, even better than "High Sierra," which is quite similar in its plot of a gangster being hunted by the police to his ultimate demise.

It's also James Cagney's big comeback role, for which he did not receive so much as a nomination for best actor. Of course, that's par for the course for AMPAS; Movies that were ahead of their time have been overlooked for most of the Academy's history.

Although firmly ensconsed within the film noir genre, and a movie that's clearly of its time, Cagney's defining role of gangster Cody Jarrett was way ahead of its time: Never before has a thug of the silver screen been played so brutally yet so sympathetically (psychopaths were never played by such obvious leading men; they were usually women, femme fatales such as Barbara Stanwyck in "Double Indemnity" and Ann Blythe in "Mildred Pierce," or the occasional character actor like Peter Lorre, in "M"). In 1949, one didn't see "tough guy" actors such as Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster and Humphrey Bogart play mental weaklings, such as Cagney portrayed in this flick. It was unheard of even for the biggest villains to be turned to mush by a psychotic disorder; Such roles would not become commonplace until the "psychological westerns" (an interesting, but largely forgetable, genre) of the 1960s. Yet, Cagney tackled this role with over-the-top aplomb and sarcastic panache.

"White Heat" boasts a sterling supporting cast, most notably Margaret Wycherly as Ma Jarrett, the hardboiled crime matriarch to whose grease-splattered apron strings mama's boy Cody desperately clings. This too required guts on Cagney's part, given the thinly veiled subplot of Cody's fixation on and fierce attachment to his mother. Although more implied than explicated, 1940s audiences got the Oedipal message.

Steve Cochran plays Big Ed, Cody's right hand man, whose backstabbing rivalry to Cody inflames Cagney's Napoleon cmoplex. "If I turned my back long enough for Big Ed to put a hole in it, there'd be a hole in it," quips Jarrett, who lacks sentiment for anyone else in the world except his ma. Edmond O'Brien turns in the movie's best supporting performance as the undercover cop, whose befriending of Cody behind bars actually betrays the cop's sympathy for Jarrett's mental plight.

"White Heat" ends in a blazing fury of cinematic pyromania, courtesy of director of photography Sid Hickox, who also photographed immortal films noir "The Big Sleep," "Dark Passage" and "To Have and Have Not."

A quintessential film noir, "White Heat" is a highly polished product of the Warner Bros. studio system, the kinda film they don't make anymore. As with all Warner's A-list movies, it features a pummeling Wagnerian soundtrack by the legendary Max Steiner. The score is one of Steiner's most intense and complements the on-screen violence with Steiner's rich use of big brass, low strings and incendiary winds and trumpets.

Put this in your DVD player, and you'll be on top of the world!

Rating:
Summary: CAGNEY AT HIS PSYCHO THUG BEST
Review: James Cagney is psycho thug Cody Jarrett in WHITE HEAT (1949). Unduly devoted to his hard-boiled "Ma," Cagney gives an electrifying career defining performance. Briskly directed by Raoul Walsh, this energetic thriller traces Jarrett's desperate, vicious life in and out of jail until he triumphantly screams, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" just before hell literally swallows him in a blazing fireball.

Extras: a 1949 newsreel, "So You Think You're Not Guilty" comedy short, "Homeless Hare" cartoon and the new featurette "White Heat: Top of the World." The commentary by USC film teacher Drew Casper is dry as bones.

Don't miss this great movie.




Rating:
Summary: A PENETRATING FLASH POINT OF DIABOLICAL EXCITEMENT!
Review: The intense character study of criminal insanity in Raoul Walsh's "White Heat" (1949) is most likely the other great Cagney performance that has endured the test of time in Warner's gangster genre. Cagney plays the psychotic and sadistic Arthur 'Cody' Jarrett, a ruthless gang leader with a penchant for deriving pleasure from the affliction of pain. Plagued by torturous headaches and a mother fixation with Freud written all over it, Cody revels in murdering his wounded accomplice during a jail break. Cody's 'ma' (Margaret Whycherly) has allowed herself the luxury to forget that she's given birth to the criminal anti-Christ. Meanwhile, Cody's wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo) flaunts her sexuality to every man she meets while enduring the brutality and neglect of her unstable husband. This, of course, ends badly for all concerned. The plot thickens when a henchman plots an 'accident' for Cody, that is foiled when an undercover cop, Vic Pardo (Edmund O'Brien) inflitrates the gang. The finale of this barn-burner will justly go down as one of the greatest in all crime films, as Cody - betrayed and about to die, shouts triumphantly, "Made it, ma! Top of the world!" against the backdrop of a burning chemical plant. "White Heat" may have been a remake twice removed, but neither the 26' nor the 34' versions come close to the immediate panic and raw hysteria of this great film classic.

Warner's DVD exhibits exemplary image quality throughout. The gray scale is rich and nicely balanced with deep solid blacks, clean whites and fine distinctions of tonality. Fine details are fully realized, even during some of the darker scenes. Occasionally film grain and minor dirt and scratches appear but these will certainly not distract. The image quality overall is sharp and consistent for a presentation that will surely please. The audio is mono but extremely well balanced and very nicely represented. Extras include an adequate audio commentary by noted authoritarian, Drew Casper, a newly produced featurette which is very succinct and Leonard Maltin's hosting of "Warner's Night At The Movies". Highly recommended!


Rating:
Summary: Quintessential Cagney...and an American iconic film
Review: Top of the world, Ma! With these immortal words, Jimmy Cagney added a phrase to American culture never to be forgotten. As the mother-obsessed, migraine-tortured, maniac gangster Cody Jarrett, Cagney's 1949 portrayal initiated and indelibly cemented the icon of the American psycho in the American psyche. Forever burned into our awareness, his persona makes this film a gangster classic--often imitated, never equalled (as the trite but true saying goes).

Edmond O'Brien as the typically dullish guy he played so well, here an undercover cop, is right on target, as is Virginia Mayo as Cody's stunning wife Verna who finds no solace in her husband (who's infinitely more taken with his mother than his wife). His mother is the one who comforts his blasting headaches, not his wife; his mother is the one he turns to, not his wife--for anything and everything. Except one thing, of course (Cody's nuts but he's not THAT nuts), and so Verna finds comfort in the arms of big Steve Cochran, one of Cody's henchmen.

The chase that comprises the final scene, with the cops after Cody at night in an oilfield, is capped, as most of us know by this time, with our anti-hero climbing to the top of an oil tower (the symbolism is rife here), screaming out his roaring plea--the first few words of this review--only to be burned alive with the crack shots of a police sharpshooter whose surefire aim sets the tower ablaze. This climax stands as one of the great scenes in American cinema. Cody is America himself, blast-boasting his triumph to the archetype of his dependence as he goes down in flames. An absolutely astounding scene.

The title, of course, refers to Cody whose persona has CREATED the manner of his demise. His death is one of the great examples of objective correlative, a term that literary theorists love to bandy about, and here it is fully realized as almost nowhere else in American film. That is, the psychology of the person creates or is inextricably linked to an object or situation that perfectly reflects that psychology.

So iconic was this film that the great 1959 Robert Wise noir (some say the last true film noir), Odds Against Tomorrow, stole the tower scene from White Heat for the climactic shootout, and 1952's The Sniper presented another psycho (up to White Heat, not a viable character type in American film) who shoots to kill randomly. Even Peter Bogdanovich snuck in a quiet indirect reference to White Heat when, in Targets, he has his young sniper psycho shoot people from the top of a water tower.

One of the masterpieces of American cinema, White Heat stands alone and should absolutely not be missed. I salute Warner for putting this out on DVD in their great Gangsters series.