Product Details

• Actors: James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Margaret Wycherly, Steve Cochran
• Directors: Raoul Walsh
• Writers: Ben Roberts, Ivan Goff, Virginia Kellogg
• Producers: Louis F. Edelman
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: August 6, 1996
• Run Time: 114 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304111428
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #15,337 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

This superb 1949 crime drama takes elements of plot, character, and theme familiar from '30s melodramas and orchestrates them as an existential tragedy noir. James Cagney, in a towering performance, is Cody Jarrett, a transparently psychotic robber with a molten temper, feral cunning, and mercurial charm that are finely calibrated extensions of the doomed gangsters he played a decade before, this time coiled not around a Depression-era impetus of greed or class rivalry, but an Oedipal bond. Cody's beloved, calculating "Ma" (Margaret Wycherly) is the compass for his every move, her iron will and long shadow acknowledged not only by Cody but by his gang, his bored, restless wife (Virginia Mayo, radiating sensuality and guile), and the undercover cop (Edmond O'Brien) planted in Jarrett's path.

Director Raoul Walsh propels the story from a rolling start, a tautly paced train robbery that goes awry, culminating in the leader's capture. An ambitious henchman (Steve Cochran) plots a behind-bars hit foiled by O'Brien, who's infiltrated the prison to befriend Jarrett, a goal handily accomplished with the rescue. Jarrett's paranoia, murderous anger, and longing for his mother are interwoven with intermittent, incapacitating headaches that underline and amplify his core of inner rage; Cagney makes these seizures harrowing, revealing purely animal pain and terror at once frightening and pathetic.

Jarrett's escape, the gang's reunion with fellow escapee O'Brien aboard, trusted by Jarrett but not his partners, and the big score that unravels in a climactic gun battle in an oil refinery are conducted with a gritty economy, and Walsh and his cast evoke a criminal life devoid of glamour, noteworthy for the undercurrents of distrust that keep tempers flaring. The final showdown, and Jarrett's crazed, taunting battle cry in the face of death ("Top of the world, Ma!"), achieve a sense of tragic inevitability that deservedly make this a defining moment in Cagney's screen career. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars James Cagney as a Disturbed Gangster & Noir Protagonist., March 7, 2005

By	mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: White Heat (DVD)

"White Heat" is unusual in that it is a genre film that is also widely considered to be film noir. It's immistakably a gangster film, yet it deviates from the conventions of that genre in that its main character, Cody Jarrett, is complex and introverted enough to be a noir protagonist. "White Heat" was masterfully directed by Raoul Walsh and features James Cagney in one of this most memorable gangster roles. Treasury Department investigator Philip Evans (John Archer) is hot on the trail of the notorious criminal Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) after the Jarrett gang has robbed a mail train, killing several people and making off with a substantial sum. In order to guarantee himself immunity from the multiple murder charge, Cody confesses to an out-of-state robbery that took place at the same time, for which he receives a couple of years in prison. But the Feds are wise to his scheme and place an undercover agent (Edmond O'Brien) in the cell with Cody, hoping to learn the identity of the person who launders money for the Jarrett gang.

The psychology of Cody Jarrett is the most striking aspect of "White Heat", and the element around which the story revolves. We are told by the federal investigators that Cody is actually "insane". He is bloodthirsty and so unstable that his pursuers fear that he will go completely off his head before they can learn anything from him. Cody also has a pathologically dependent relationship with his doting and equally ruthless mother, who is played to perfection by Margaret Wycherly. Cody is such an extreme personality that James Cagney's ability to make him completely believable is remarkable. The "good guy" undercover cop, Hank Fallon, is bland and submissive, which only increases our focus on Cody. Another striking characteristic of "White Heat" is its technophilia: The film spends a great deal of time demonstrating cutting edge surveillance technology that is used to track Cody. Cody is defeated more by technology and bureaucracy than he is by his own lunacy.

The DVD: Bonus features include a documentary about the film, a theatrical trailer, an audio commentary by author and film professor Dr. Drew Casper, and a "Warner Night at the Movies" prelude to the film. If you have time, "Warner Night at the Movies" is a nice feature. With an introduction by Leonard Maltin, Warner Brothers provides a nice collection of mini-features that emulate the now-defunct tradition of showing a cartoon, a short, a newsreel, and a trailer with every theatrical film. "White Heat" was released in 1949, so we have, from 1949: a trailer for the film "The Fountainhead" (2 minutes), a newsreel of the year's highlights (1 1/2 minutes), a short "Joe McDoakes" comedy, called "So You Think You're Not Guilty" (10 minutes), based on the old vaudeville routine "Pay the Two Dollars", and a Bugs Bunny cartoon called "Homeless Hare" (7 minutes). You can also watch the featurettes separately if you like. "White Heat: Top of the World" (16 minutes) features interviews with filmmakers, critics, and theorists, including Martin Scorsese and Alain Silver, in which they discuss the film's themes, James Cagney's role, and the characters of Cody, Ma, and Cody's wife Verna, played by Virginia Mayo. The audio commentary by Drew Casper approaches "White Heat" as a gangster film, not as film noir, as this seems to be Dr. Casper's area of expertise. Casper talks about how the film was promoted, James Cagney, Freudian influences, themes, and analyzes director Raoul Walsh's style for some scenes. Subtitles are available for the film in English, Spanish, and French.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the film that ended the 40's with a bang., June 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: White Heat (1949) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I have seen White Heat numerous times and it never flags or fails. It's the swan song of Warner Brothers gangster films and is one of the wildest rides you can imagine. It's a heist film, with a twist and it comes in the form of a gangster so bent, so over the top, that no one has come close to it.No one is stupid enough to try. James Cagney plays Cody Jarrett, a ruthless gangster,killer,strong arm robber and mama's boy. His work is so compelling, so overwhelming and vicious that it stunned viewers in 1949 and followed Cagney for the rest of his career. Cagney loathed the success of the role, fearing that it overshadowed all of his other screen performances, which it did, for its successful portrayal of a lunatic force of nature. Cagney was an actor who could and did anything. Gangsters, screwball comedies, dramas, musicals, westerns, war films, and Shakespeare. To be typed as an insane killer, who could shoot trapped henchmen in a car trunk while munching on a chicken leg, while throwing off one liners,was not what he wanted to be remembered for, but watch White Heat and see if this work can be easily forgotten. White Heat's non-stop action, it's no nonsense propulsion is provided by a solid script, great character actors, and the perceptive eye of director Raoul Walsh. We find ourselves clearly rooting for a psychopathic killer, because most of the world he moves through is populated with nothing but thieves, backstabbers and robot like FBI agents who walk and talk like Hal 2000's. And check out the role of Fallon (Edmond O'Brien). It's a cunning performance and contributes to the overall weirdness of White Heat. No sense giving the ending away, but it did introduce audiences to the cataclysmic force of the atomic age in all it's craziness. You have to go to Kiss Me Deadly to find an ending that gets close to matching it. I hate numerology, but if you like segmenting films by decades, White Heat is the film that ends the 1940's. Nothing comes close.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A PENETRATING FLASH POINT OF DIABOLICAL EXCITEMENT!, January 27, 2005

By	Nix Pix (Windsor, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: White Heat (DVD)

The intense character study of criminal insanity in Raoul Walsh's "White Heat" (1949) is most likely the other great Cagney performance that has endured the test of time in Warner's gangster genre. Cagney plays the psychotic and sadistic Arthur 'Cody' Jarrett, a ruthless gang leader with a penchant for deriving pleasure from the affliction of pain. Plagued by torturous headaches and a mother fixation with Freud written all over it, Cody revels in murdering his wounded accomplice during a jail break. Cody's 'ma' (Margaret Whycherly) has allowed herself the luxury to forget that she's given birth to the criminal anti-Christ. Meanwhile, Cody's wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo) flaunts her sexuality to every man she meets while enduring the brutality and neglect of her unstable husband. This, of course, ends badly for all concerned. The plot thickens when a henchman plots an 'accident' for Cody, that is foiled when an undercover cop, Vic Pardo (Edmund O'Brien) inflitrates the gang. The finale of this barn-burner will justly go down as one of the greatest in all crime films, as Cody - betrayed and about to die, shouts triumphantly, "Made it, ma! Top of the world!" against the backdrop of a burning chemical plant. "White Heat" may have been a remake twice removed, but neither the 26' nor the 34' versions come close to the immediate panic and raw hysteria of this great film classic.

Warner's DVD exhibits exemplary image quality throughout. The gray scale is rich and nicely balanced with deep solid blacks, clean whites and fine distinctions of tonality. Fine details are fully realized, even during some of the darker scenes. Occasionally film grain and minor dirt and scratches appear but these will certainly not distract. The image quality overall is sharp and consistent for a presentation that will surely please. The audio is mono but extremely well balanced and very nicely represented. Extras include an adequate audio commentary by noted authoritarian, Drew Casper, a newly produced featurette which is very succinct and Leonard Maltin's hosting of "Warner's Night At The Movies". Highly recommended!