White Heat
White Heat
Member's Rating
  • Currently 4/5} Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Rate this movie

0 1 2 3 4 5

Rent this DVD

Synopsis

A superb collection of pre-war and post-war gangster classics, featuring psychopathic killers, Freudian obsessions, bootlegging rackets, rags-to-riches stories, and more. Each of the six films is presented with a Leonard Maltin-hosted Night at the Movies program, with bonus cartoons and comedy and musical shorts. Includes The Public Enemy (1931, 82 mins.) with James Cagney, White Heat (1949, 113 mins.) with James Cagney and Virginia Mayo, Angels with Dirty Faces (1938, 97 mins.) with James Cagney and Pat O'Brien, Little Caesar (1930, 78 mins.) with Edward G . Robinson and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., The Petrified Forest (1936, 82 mins.) with Bette Davis and Leslie Howard, and The Roaring Twenties USA---1930-1949

Reviews of 'White Heat'

Write Your Own Online Review
1 Customer Review  |  See All Customer Reviews

Most Recent Reviews
Here is a list of the most recently submitted reviews for this movie.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  | Lewis#4

There are normal headaches and then there are migraines and then there are James Cagney's go- completely-berserk seizures, violent, bizarre episodes, which will be unforgettable to anyone who has seen this great Raoul Walsh film. Building on his snarling, sociopathic, tough-guy image ("dirty copper!"), Cagney ups the ante with the Cody Jarrett character, making him a dangerously unstable psycho with a significant mother complex. Ma Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly channeling Ma Barker) is Cody's best girl, more essential to his existence than his slutty wife (Virginia Mayo) and the only person able to soothe his debilitating headaches. (While her knowledge of the Trojan Horse story inspires Cody's last heist, her embrace of Greek mythology seems not to include Oedipus.) "White Heat" represents a post-war evolution, really a culmination, of the studio-generated gangster flick. Earlier prohibition-era movies were often didactically earnest presentations of crime as a social malady. With the present film the focus is more psychiatric than sociological. Cody is a remorseless killer, teetering always on the edge of a complete psychotic break and going over the edge in the film's iconic climax ("top of the world, Ma!"). He's the kind of man for whom the straightjacket was created, and before the end he is hugging himself in one. The part was made for Cagney, an uninhibited actor who made a specialty of playing menacing, bantam-weight criminals, able to intimidate physically bigger men (most were bigger). He is the central character in this film and the key to its enduring popularity.

I found this review: