Tracking down the titles that I haven’t seen from Danny Peary’s Cult Movies 2 book has included a lot of Hollywood classics like White Heat (1949) directed by Raoul Walsh and starring James Cagney, which was a critical and commercial success upon release. Nowadays, its known more for its a heavily referenced iconic closing line, which you cannot avoid with how it has been absorbed into popular culture throughout the decades. From a contemporary perspective, James Cagney’s acting style might seem old-timey and over-the-top, but his turn as mother-loving criminal psychopath Cody Jarnett is a straight line to Al Pacino in Scarface or Jack Nicholson in The Departed in regards to a continual echo of scenery-chewery larger-than-life performances that go hand-in-hand with the crime epic genre. I’ve really only seen The Public Enemy, from when Cagney was younger, and White Heat was a return to the gangster genre, a genre that made him a star but one that he wasn’t personally in love with (being more of a song-and-dance man). In contrast to the 1930s gangster movies, this one does turn up the volume on the violence and the histronics, incorporating a psychological aspect that was probably more in vogue in the 1940s with Jarnett’s headaches, mood swings and eternal devotion to his mother (Margaret Wycherly, great), not a kindly saint like the mother in The Public Enemy but a part of the gang – his consigliere, basically. There’s a square jaw, goody two shoes cop on the case (John Archer) but thankfully we spend more time with undercover agent played by the great Edmund O’Brien (Seven Days In May, The Wild Bunch) who becomes part of Cody’s gang while he’s in prison. This is also the other great aspect of White Heat in that it feels like a crime movie epic in how it incorporates different sub-genres: it’s a heist movie, a prison movie, a film noir, and its infamous finale preempts the apocalyptic flair of something like Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly. Virginia Mayo also stars as Cody’s two-timing femme fatale girlfriend, Verna. Cagney’s great – a stocky, murderous, sneering powder keg – and I was glad to have finally seen this classic of the crime genre. Rented on iTunes. Recommended.
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