WHITE HEAT.
James Cagney & Edmond O Brien,
Virginia Mayo, Steve Cochran, John Archer.
Dir: Raoul Walsh, 1949, Warner Bros.

SYNOPSIS:
Probably the most famous Cagney movie. An undercover cop sneakily joins a mob led by a psychotic gangster and his Mom. By 1949 Jimmy had aged a bit and put some weight on so his persona steals some of E G Robinson's heft and unpredictable menace, thus combining all the aspects we love above these vicious hoods into one pistol-toting figure. It's an action picture that motors along like a burning fuse and, for a change, the climax really is as explosive and violent as we're all wishing it to be.

"Not long ago a reporter asked me if I didn't have to 'psyche' myself up for the scene where I go berserk on learning of my Mother's death. My answer is that you don't psyche yourself up for these things, you do them. I knew what deranged people sounded like because once as a youngster I had visited Ward's Island where a pal's Uncle was in the hospital for the insane. My god, what an education that was! The shrieks, the screams of those people under restraint! I remembered their cries, saw that they fitted and I called on my memory to do as required. No need to psyche up."
- Jimmy Cagney.

REVIEWS:
"This searing melodrama reintroduced the old Cagney and then some: spellbinding suspense sequences complemented his vivid and hypnotic portrayal."
- Leslie Halliwell.
"In the hurtling tabloid traditions of the gangster movies of the thirties, but its matter-of-fact violence is a new post-war style."
- Time.
"A wild and exciting picture of mayhem and madness."
- Life.
"The most gruesome aggregation of brutalities ever presented under the guise of entertainment."
- Cue.
"Despite all the scatterbrained nonsense of the script, Cagney, representing a homicidal maniac whose favourite girl is his dear old two-gun mother, comes up with a performance so full of menace that I hereby recommend him for whatever Oscar is given an artist for rising above the asininity of his producers. The police not only are bold, brave, strong and willing but use more paraphernalia in capturing enemies of society than were required for the invasion of Normandy."
- John McCarten, The New Yorker.