Starring James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien.
Directed by Raoul Walsh.  (1949, 114 mins, B&W)

James Cagney first became a star in the 1930s as a tough criminal in Warner Bros. Studio’s classic gangster melodramas. He went on, of course, to play a great variety of other roles, ranging from George M. Cohan to the great silent star Lon Chaney, Sr., in dramas, musicals and comedies. But in 1949, Cagney returned one last time to the role of tough guy in “White Heat” – a crime drama that takes the familiar elements of plot, character and theme from his old ‘30s gangster pictures but transforms them into a kind of Film Noir tragedy. Cagney is Cody Jarrett, a deranged criminal prone to headaches and seizures. His molten temper, feral cunning and mercurial charm are finely calibrated extensions of the doomed gangsters Cagney 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 restless wife (Virginia Mayo, radiating sensuality and guile), and the undercover cop (Edmond O'Brien) planted in Jarrett's path. Cagney’s performance is nothing less than superb as he creates one of the most frighteningly psychotic characters ever seen on screen, a model for the stranger, more brutal outlaws who would dominate crime cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. The fiery, climactic scene has become part of pop culture.

(Film descriptions compiled from various sources.)