White Heat

Released Sep 2, 1949

1h 54m

Crime

Drama

Action

List

94%

80 Reviews

Tomatometer

93%

5,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Gang leader Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) lives for his mother, planning heists between horrible headaches. During a train robbery that goes wrong, Cody shoots an investigator. Realizing Cody will never be stopped if he knows he's being pursued, authorities plant undercover agent Hank (Edmond O'Brien) in Cody's cell. When his mother dies, a distraught Cody breaks out of jail, bringing Hank along to join his gang. With Hank in communication with the police, Cody plans a payroll heist.

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Critics Consensus

Raoul Walsh's crime drama goes further into the psychology of a gangster than most fear to tread and James Cagney's portrayal of the tragic anti-hero is constantly volatile.

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Marjory Adams

Boston Globe

James Cagney gives an astounding, realistic, terrific portrayal of a gangster as menacing and as ruthless as any ever played on the screen as the star of White Heat.

Apr 23, 2024

Full Review

Kate Cameron

New York Daily News

White Heat, made by Warners, under Raoul Walsh's direction and suggested by a Virginia Kellogg story, is a highly exciting cops and robbers melodrama. One scene of violence follows another, until the thrilling climax.

Rated: 3.5/4

Apr 23, 2024

Full Review

George Bourke

Miami Herald

This is taut, high-powered drama, with trigger-quick action following an adroitly drawn, if melodramatic, suspense pattern.

Apr 23, 2024

Full Review

Jay Carmody

Washington Star

It has a cast worthy of a super-criminal, with such supporting players as Virginia Mayo, Edmond O’Brien and Margaret Wycherly. What these and the others are up to is undeniably alive with action.

Apr 23, 2024

Full Review

Jane Corby

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Cagney is the whole works in this show, although the story is excellent and the supporting cast is fine. But it’s Cagney who keeps the audience cowed... This Cagney picture is a gangster picture to end all gangster pictures.

Apr 23, 2024

Full Review

Hortense Morton (Screen Scout)

San Francisco Examiner

This is a film of action and suspense... one of the finest in a long time... in case we didn't realize before that crime doesn't pay, this is the cincher.

Apr 23, 2024

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Isaiah Y

James Cagney’s greatest performance in one of the greatest crime films ever made

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

04/26/24

Full Review

Steve D

Hard not to enjoy for Cagney alone.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

04/01/24

Full Review

MercersLaw

Having never see a James Cagney movie I decided to start with this. He clearly was a great actor even in today's standards. It is pretty comical in parts, there is a bit where he one punches about 4 officers in a row in the prison. A decent plot and great support round up this movie. Definitely one to watch before you die, it only took me 40 years to watch.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/28/24

Full Review

Alec B

A masterclass in pacing. Not a second of this movie is wasted, each scene only adds intriguing complications to the plot. Cagney is exactly the kind of terrifying energy the movie needed.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/05/24

Full Review

Georgan G

One of the classics! The plot shows how psychological criminal behavior can run in the DNA. This parent may even be worse than Cagney's character, as who knows how much is DNA & how much is poor parenting.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

10/02/23

Full Review

Matthew B

White Heat marked something of a reluctant comeback for James Cagney. The popular actor with the boyish face and brash charm had made his name in the 1930s, when he appeared in gangsters movies such as The Public Enemy and Angels with Dirty Faces. However Cagney had grown weary of being typecast in this kind of role. "I'm sick of carrying a gun and beating up women," he declared. Unfortunately the success of other projects such as Yankee Doodle Dandy was not easily maintained. By the late 1940s, Cagney had appeared in a number of commercially unsuccessful films. So in 1949, the actor returned to Warner Brothers and the gangster movie because he needed money, and because his box office appeal was starting to fade. White Heat proved to be a reasonable success, and helped to put Cagney's fortunes back on the mend. Nonetheless the actor did not personally think much of this movie, which was made in a hurry and on the cheap by veteran director, Raoul Walsh. I cannot locate the quotation, but I am sure that someone said of Walsh that his movies have a fast pace because he was in a hurry to complete them. Whatever the case, Walsh was a talented and hard-working director who knew how to get the best out of a good film. White Heat is possibly his best work, and it is now thought to be one of the greatest gangster movies of all time. Walsh had a good sense for gripping action scenes, and he realised that Cagney was his most bankable asset. It may seem strange for me to say it now when subsequent gangster movies have become far more violent than White Heat, but I remember being shocked by the movie when I first saw it as a child. For the first few minutes of the film, there is no reassuring moral universe where someone steps in to save the day. Innocent unarmed men are casually slaughtered. Honour among thieves is missing, and Jarrett is ruthless about despatching his own gang members. The law seems helpless to prevent these criminals, and its leading representative nearly loses his life. It is only after this opening that the film settles down, and the story begins to follow the efforts of the police to track Cody Jarrett. White Heat is a curious hybrid, containing elements of numerous genres and sub-genres. It is primarily a gangster movie, with the lead characters being based on real criminals such as Francis Cowley and Ma Barker. The movie is also a film noir, a heist movie, a prison movie, a prison break movie and a police procedure movie, following the investigations into the mobsters in the familiar semi-documentary style that was common at the time. Despite many years of playing the gangster, Cagney was playing a more complicated character than usual, and he rose to the challenge. Indeed Cagney contributed to making his role more complex. It is said that it was Cagney's own idea to make Cody Jarrett psychotic, and that Cagney partly based his performance on his experience of his father's alcoholic rages. Cagney freely suggested ideas to improve the film. Early in the movie he improvised a seizure where Jarrett falls on the floor in front of his fellow criminals. It was Cagney's ideas that Jarrett knock his wife off a chair for mocking his mother. The actor also beefed up the story's Oedipal undercurrents by having Cody sit on his mother's lap when he wants to be soothed. In the scene where Jarrett is reunited with his wife after his prison break, Cagney hid in a different spot than agreed so that Virginia Mayo's shock at seeing him would be genuine. Cody Jarrett is one of the great cinema villains, a man who is dangerously unstable and barely holding onto his sanity. He is a remorseless killer when occasion demands, and he lacks any redeeming features. Even his whole-hearted devotion to his mother has an unhealthy and incestuous tinge to it. The movie's most famous quotation, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" is associated with something that she often says to him, and it is used ahead of an event that will bring the film to an explosive conclusion. While White Heat includes many familiar plot tropes of the crime movie of that time, there is something tongue-in-cheek in the way that Raoul Walsh uses them. The rough and violent mobster is a mummy's boy. The rival gangster is a coward who lets his moll shoot an elderly woman in the back. The femme fatale spits out her gum before kissing her man, and tries to betray him one last time by flirting with the leading cop who simply responds: "No deal – lock her up!" Nonetheless the humour of White Heat does not cheapen the suspense and excitement of the story, or reduce the action to bathos. It is a harsh and tough-edged thriller that builds to a suspenseful climax. I wrote a longer appreciation of White Heat on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2019/08/04/white-heat-1949/

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

09/28/23

Full Review

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Raoul Walsh

Director

James Cagney

Arthur "Cody" Jarrett

Virginia Mayo

Verna Jarrett

Edmond O'Brien

Vic Pardo

Margaret Wycherly

Ma Jarrett

Steve Cochran

Big Ed Somers

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Synopsis

Gang leader Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) lives for his mother, planning heists between horrible headaches. During a train robbery that goes wrong, Cody shoots an investigator. Realizing Cody will never be stopped if he knows he's being pursued, authorities plant undercover agent Hank (Edmond O'Brien) in Cody's cell. When his mother dies, a distraught Cody breaks out of jail, bringing Hank along to join his gang. With Hank in communication with the police, Cody plans a payroll heist.

Director: Raoul Walsh
Screenwriter: Virginia Kellogg, Ivan Goff
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures, Key Video
Production Co: Warner Brothers
Genre: Crime, Drama, Action
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Sep 2, 1949, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 1, 2009
Runtime: 1h 54m
Sound Mix: Mono
Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.37:1)

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