NFR Project: 'White Heat' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “White Heat”

Dir: Raoul Walsh

Scr: Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts

Pho: Sidney Hickox

Ed: Owen Marks

Premiere: Sept. 2, 1949

114 min.

James Cagney was looking for a hit. After he won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1942, he left Warner Brothers, went off on his own and tried to make his own movies independently. He failed. So back he went to Warner Brothers, signing up to make more movies for the studio he had originally rejected.

The studio was eager for him to make a gangster film. Cagney resisted, as he thought he was being overidentified with the genre. However, he overcame his reluctance and made White Heat, one of the most iconic of all crime films.

It’s a bifurcated story. One half of it is about the modern police’s enhanced abilities and procedures that allow them to track down and neutralize bad guys; the other half is about Cody Jarrett. Cagney is Jarrett, in a towering performance of psychotic intensity.

Jarrett is a bank robber, ruthless and insane, unconcerned with his casual murders. He is unnaturally attached to his criminal “Ma” (Margaret Wycherly), who both lives for him and controls him. He suffers from spells of burning headaches that torment him; only Ma can soothe them away. Together, they seek to live large (“top of the world,” she tells him) He leads a gang that includes his wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) and right-hand man “Big Ed” (Steve Cochran).

Cody is almost nabbed for a train robbery, but pleads to a lesser (false) charge, so that he is sentenced to only two years in prison. A Treasury agent places an undercover man, Fallon (Edmond O’Brien) in prison, assigning him to befriend Cody.

Verna and Big Ed are playing around behind Cody’s back. Big Ed tries unsuccessfully to have Cody killed in prison. In an iconic scene in the prison mess, Jarrett finds out that Ma is dead. (Look closely in this scene for the great Native American athlete, Jim Thorpe.) He goes berserk, slugging guards and writhing frantically as he is carted away.

He vows to escape, and does with Fallon in tow. Returning home, he kills Big Ed and the inmate who tried to kill him. Soon the gang has another robbery in mind – the payroll department of a big chemical plant. Using a gas truck like a Trojan horse, the gang enters the plant and begins to crack the safe. Fallon is recognized, but escapes. Surrounded, the gang is rubbed out one by one. Jarrett climbs to the top of an enormous storage tank and fires into it. It bursts into flame. Shouting “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” Jarrett exults and is blown to smithereens.

Cagney was 49 when he made White Heat; his youthful good looks were leaving him and he was making the transition to character roles. His decision to play an utterly despicable character was unique, but it worked. Jarrett is a complex of violent impulses, barely capable of getting through the day without killing someone. It’s a brilliant portrayal of a criminal as a mentally damaged individual.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Bohulano family film collection.