The Definitives: White Heat (1949)

by Brian Eggert
Join us on Facebook

James Cagney reinvented his longstanding gangster persona in White Heat, the 1949 film in which he plays Cody Jarrett, a wanted criminal whose unlawful activities are reflected by the character’s extreme inner madness. Directed by Raoul Walsh, the picture proved ahead of its time by gravitating itself around the often shocking psychological makeup of Cagney’s role. During the 1930s, Cagney had starred in a number of classic gangster pictures for Warner Bros., the studio most associated with screen gangsters, and almost none of these films considered the criminal beyond their unhinged social conscience and the freedom of gangster violence. Even more than other screen gangsters such as Edward G. Robinson or Humphrey Bogart, Cagney’s name would be forever linked with the motion picture gangster, no matter how hard he tried to change that image. Despite this, Cagney returned after a decade-long effort to distance himself from such roles, recognizing White Heat was something far more than another studio genre piece. Through his vicious, psychopathic, yet strangely sympathetic role, the actor’s legendary presence gives way to a film that both sums up and sends off his own history in the classic Warner Bros. gangster picture...

Read the full article