White Heat

Most famous as the film where Jimmy Cagney shouts "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!", White Heat is also generally regarded as the last real old-fashioned gangster film. After all, it was directed by Raoul Walsh, who directed such gangster landmarks as The Roaring Twenties and High Sierra, and it stars a man whose most (in)famous cinematic moment may have shoving a grapefruit in his wife's face. Such films became less frequent in the 50s, and when they came out it wasn't from Warner Bros. Before that climactic oil explosion, it's a fairly typical gangster flick whose first hour is a bit tepid, before going for all-out exciement in the second part. At the screening, some annoying folks felt like snickering whenver Cagney had an epileptic fit or when something occurred that, due to widespread imitation in films, was wildly predictable. Such a reaction is truly sad, since White Heat has aged well and remains the real thing - 40s noir doesn't get much more hardboiled than this.

It's not necessary to say much about the plot: it's about a psycho gang leader (Cagney) whose gang is infiltrated by FBI inside man Vic Pardo (the great supporting actor Edmond O'Brien). Complications ensure as the gang gets ready for that big final heist. The part of the story that most remember is that Cagney is very dependent on mom (Brit Margaret Wycherley) to an uncomfortably incestuous level. You see, he's her favorite child and she's part of his gang. The cinematic result was banned in Finland. It remains creepy today.

A large part of the film takes place inside prison, and it's full of archetypal images that Frank Darabont must have seen before making The Shawshank Redemption. The influence of this film is widespread, and it lives up to expectations in the riveting second half. In the end, Walsh, a great director of fast-paced films (along with a script by Goff and Roberts, a team that later went on to write for "Charlie's Angels"), manages to make us sympathize a bit with Cagney even while we root for the FBI. Not just that, but the suspense grows even though the ending is pre-ordained because of that famous clip. White Heat is quite more than that famous finale.

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