White Heat
In the 1930s, James Cagney was the undisputed king of the old school gangster movie. Often co starring in these films with Humphrey Bogart (whom he would regularly make his bitch), Cagney seemed to revel in playing amoral, ruthless criminal scumbags and audiences would line up in droves in order to see him do it. Problem is, Cagney hated playing these type of roles, thinking of them as an easy paycheck while always expressing a desire to do more movies which could be seen by families with children even as almost all those movies themselves are considered to be classics to this day. After the decade ended, Cagney had enough clout in Hollywood to tell the studio bosses that he was done and done with doing these type of movies and would consider doing projects with any other kind of subject matter. At first, this ultimatum went pretty well for him as he quickly grabbed up a Best Actor Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy which suited the trained song and dance man just fine playing real life song and dance man George M. Cohan. But after that success came a long string of flops throughout the 1940s and finally in 1949, Cagney agreed to do one more of his bread and butter gangster roles with this effort that not only remains his undisputedly most famous gangster movie, but also arguably his best and most fondly remembered performance ever. At 50 years of age, Cagney took on a script that he reportedly considered to be awful but, knowing that he was being given free reign to cut loose and take it as far as he wanted to go, he wound up going all the way with a legendary crazed performance that for what it lacked in subtlety, more than made up for it in terms of over the top psychotic behavior and cackling, charismatic evil. His Cody Jarrett was a role that remains indelibly etched in Hollywood history as played by a legendary actor who laid all his cards out on the table in a performance where he had seemingly nothing to lose. Cagney is literally so nutso here that one has to think that if a full on Batman movie had been produced at the time, then Cagney would have been heavily considered to take on the role of The Joker given the intense level of insanity he puts on display here (very few people had ever seen such an overall intense performance up to that time in movie history period). Cagney (while not necessarily a Method actor) would use a number of unexpected little tricks with his acting on camera in order to keep many of his co stars on edge around him and thus heighten the perceived fear that many of the other characters would have of his Jarrett character. These tactics include improvising a good amount of his own dialogue in order to throw peopleâs reactions off or simply just not doing what the other performer (Virginia Mayo as his wife in particular) was under the impression that he was going to actually do in any given scene. The film begins with Jarrett and his gang robbing a steam train of its cargo while killing several people including a conductor and the engineers but when one of the gang members is hit with a blast of steam and burned badly, Jarrett considers him to be a liability who is now out of the gang and who is also done with life as well, all circumstances which the gang accepts since they are all so awfully afraid of him and the overwhelming aura of ruthless strength that he gives off. His one weak spot is the occasional blinding migraine headaches which can only be soothed by the comforting touch of his mother (Margaret Wycherly) who herself is part of the gang (and in many ways the true leader). This angle of having the villain be a mother obsessed psycho (which predated Norman Bates by 11 years) and also in having his âheadachesâ (said to be at least partially caused by Jarrett being such a nutcase) gives a slight (emphasis on SLIGHT) layer of sympathy to the character even as he also proudly parades his hot wife in front of his fellow gang members (who it would seem are expected to remain celibate) but Virginia Mayo does remain one of the most underrated of the female Golden Age movie stars who did a LOT of fondly remembered, classic movies in the day before being reduced to doing low budget horror movies in the 1980s. With her unconventional good looks and very conventional blonde bombshell hair, she does a good job of playing the femme fatale whom you could never really trust as when Cagney finds out that the gang is wanted for the train robbery and the murders which took place within, he hits upon the idea of turning himself in and confessing to a much lower profile robbery committed by a friend of his on the same day and getting a measly two years for it which throws the Feds off their tracks while she takes up with his second in command (Steve Cochran, a guy who died while cruising on his yacht with three beautiful girls including one who was underage leaving the three females terrified since they didnât know what to do and floated with his dead body for 10 days before being rescued) who in turn actually arranges to have Cagney knocked off while in prison so that he can have the wife AND the loot. Meanwhile, Cagney finds himself befriended in prison by another convict (Edmond OâBrien) whom it turns out is not only an undercover FBI agent but is actually a guy who specializes in going to prison under fake names and criminal histories in order to find out just what certain prisoners are going to do next. The real meat and potatoes of the movie becomes the psychological battle of wits between Cagney and OâBrien as while Cagney appears at least to be fooled by the agentâs deception, his constantly unnerving and paranoid demeanor does make one wonder if heâs really caught onto it and is actually setting up the agent for the eventual kill. But first he must lead both the agent and a few others through a breakout of the prison so that he can reunite with his wife and kill the traitor before planning a heist of the payroll of an oil refinery complete with the help of an international fence who appears to be VERY well connected when it comes to inside information. The film does suffer from weak, static performances (common for the time period) from certain supporting actors especially the FBI agent in charge of the investigation (John Archer) who seems just a little too jovial in a goofy way whenever they get a break in the case (although reportedly some of those elements helped inspire later TV cop shows such as Dragnet) and even some of Cagneyâs own strategic tactics appear to be a bit far fetched even if he is a supposed criminal mastermind, plus whenever Cagney is offscreen period the entire narrative pace begins to completely slack off. But for a 50 year old man, Cagneyâs onscreen energy level is truly astonishing (a precursor to Pacino in Scarface who played that role in such a way that he came off in that movie as being at least 10 years younger than he actually was at the time of filming) which can be seen most impressively in arguably the filmâs most famous scene (besides the also famous ending) when he finds out in the prison mess hall that his beloved mother is dead, leading him to have a freakout of epic proportions, made much moreso by the fact that neither the other actors around him nor did director Raoul Walsh have any idea just what exactly Cagney was going to actually do in the scene showing his characterâs reaction to his motherâs death as Cagney specifically instructed Walsh to just keep the camera rolling no matter what while he would flip out on pretty much everybody in the room to an almost disturbing degree. Even Edmond OâBrien as the undercover agent was said to be in awe of Cagney as an actor since he used various acting tricks to get certain responses out of him and Mayo would say in later years that Cagneyâs acting was so intense that she feared that he would actually kill her for real even as whenever the director would yell âcutâ Cagney would revert back to his well known kind and gentle self and even share bits of his own self written poetry with his fellow actors. The end result was something that Cagney in later years (obviously depending on his mood that day) would either deride as being just another typical gangster role for him or readily admit that it was a performance that he was very proud of, but for something that displayed such a popular actor letting it all hang out as very few if any had ever done before, this remains the go to acting clinic for being a nice, well liked movie star going all out in playing an evil motherfuckerâŚ
8/10