Influenced:Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Michael Mann, Vince Gilligan
For many modern audiences, the closest they may have come to the American gangster movies of the 1930s and 1940s is watching Home Alone and its famous scene featuring a clip of Johnny shooting Snakes from Angels With Filthy Souls (not a real film, but a reference to 1938's Angels With Dirty Faces, starring James Cagney). Cagney became famous for a series of lead roles as gangsters, including his breakout role as Tom Powers in The Public Enemy (1931), but his performance in White Heat is arguably his finest. Every gangster’s tough, masculine physical demeanour on screen was influenced in some way by Cagney, and the aggression and cold-heartedness of Cagney's performance in White Heat is a level up for gangster movies, all the more remarkable given the film was made in the Hays Code era of censorship.
In his AFI lifetime award acceptance speech, Cagney talks about that "touch of the gutter" in his performances that working-class audiences responded to before and after WWII, and which made his acting feel so real. Orson Welles called Cagney the "greatest actor who appeared in front of a camera" and said he's lack of pretension and gusto was one of his main strengths – Cagney was just an ordinary kid from an Irish immigrant family who grew up in the East side of New York. In White Heat, Cagney is an ageing gangster and absolute psychopath, with no redeeming qualities, apart from perhaps his love of his mother (a similarity to his Tom Powers character in The Public Enemy).
Cagney gives an electrifying performance as Cody Jarrett, a gang leader who suffers from crippling migraines and an overbearing attachment to his mother, who is as obsessed with power as Cody is and her son’s main confidante, even more so than his wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo). Cagney switches between moments of explosive violence and quiet introspection, making the character of Cody both terrifying and at times almost sympathetic. Cagney's larger-than-life performance has been influential on so many actors throughout the years, notably Jack Nicholson, who has a similar pugnacity in many of his roles.
Walsh's direction focuses at times on the police tactics for tracking down the gangsters – including the use of three vehicles (A, B and C) on three parallel streets in a car chase and also cutting-edge "electronics", such as the radar that can plot where two lines intersect to establish the whereabouts of the criminal. When Cody’s gang is involved in a robbery that goes wrong and the police close in, Cody cleverly decides to confess to a lesser crime that took place in another state to receive a lighter sentence. This leads to the police sending in a prisoner undercover (Hank played by Edmond O'Brien) to befriend Cody, and slowly the noose tightens around his neck. The film's stunning finale – resulting in Cagney's famous quote, “Top of the world, Ma!" – is worth the price of admission alone.
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