White Heat

White Heat
by Raoul Walsh

White Heat
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Edmond O'Brien, James Cagney, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochran, Virginia Mayo
Director: Raoul Walsh
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 113 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-01-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video

Movie Reviews of White Heat

Movie Review: The Greatest of the Gangster Movies
Summary: 5 Stars

Probably Jimmy Cagney's greatest performance as well. This 1949 film, directed by Raoul Walsh, represents the first real introduction of Freud into the movies. Hitchcock's "Psycho" did not follow for another 11 years.

Cagney's Cody Jarrett, driven by suffocating mother love and searing headaches, is nothing less than spectacular. There are almost too many great scenes to describe. The two greatest are Cagney's "white-heat" maddened scramble down the jail mess tables. Accompanied by his guttural, surreal moaning it is a brilliant piece of acting. Secondly, if you have never watched the final scene you will want to see it many times over again. It is unmatched in its visual effect for that period and even more famous for Jarrett's explosive oedipal scream.

Virginia Mayo is terrific as the sensual Verna Jarrett, Cody's wife. She is able to exude attraction to Jarrett's power, and frustration at her inability to compete in her rivalry with "Ma." Jarrett. Verna reaches out for Big Ed Somers (Steve Cochran) while Jarrett serves jail time. Somers is a handsome, tough-talking and ambitious member of Cody's gang, but much to Verna's dismay she can no more convert Big Ed's big talk into action than she can compete with Ma for Cody's attention.

Her failure to seduce Somers into a challenge of Jarrett's gang leadership leads to another great and chilling scene. As Verna rounds a corner of the gang's hideout she walks right into the fearsomely volatile Cody, unexpectedly out of prison. Cody has not come home for the holidays. Ma has clued her boy in.

Margaret Wycherly's Ma Jarrett is crude on the surface but sly and wonderfully nuanced thanks to Wycherly's performance. She is a woman who has given birth to a psychopath and lives vicariously through his power, while subliminally feeding his demons. We may know Freud and Oedipus, she just knows that her boy belongs on top of the world.

If you miss this movie you truly will miss the groundbreaking best of the gangster movie genre. I do take issue with classifying this movie as film noir. It is an outstanding bridge between the gangster movie and the film noir genre; but it is "gangster" at heart and at its best.



Summary of White Heat

After escaping from prison a psychopathic criminal leads his old gang in a chemicla plant payroll robbery. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 01/25/2005 Starring: James Cagney Virginia Mayo Run time: 113 minutes Rating: Nr

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