White Heat (1949)

Director:

Raoul Walsh

Writers:

Ivan Goff (screenplay) and
Ben Roberts (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

1952 (Austria)

Genre:

Action | Crime | Film-Noir

Tagline:

James Cagney Is Red Hot In "White Heat"!

Plot:

A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. Shortly after the plan takes place, events take a crazy turn

Plot Keywords:

Prison | Heist | Escape | Undercover | Gangster

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

James Cagney	...	Arthur 'Cody' Jarrett
Virginia Mayo	...	Verna Jarrett
Edmond O'Brien	...	Vic Pardo
Margaret Wycherly	...	Ma Jarrett
Steve Cochran	...	Big Ed Somers
John Archer	...	Philip Evans
Wally Cassell	...	'Cotton' Valletti
Fred Clark	...	Daniel Winston

Runtime:

114 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Iceland:12 | UK:15 | West Germany:16 (nf) | Sweden:15 (re-rating) (1962) | Sweden:(Banned) (original rating) (1949) | Canada:PG (video rating) | South Korea:15 | Portugal:M/16 | Australia:PG | Finland:(Banned) (1950) | Finland:K-15 (re-rating) (2004) | USA:Approved (PCA #13852) | Australia:M (DVD rating)

Filming Locations:

Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

All the locations and bearings radioed back and forth during the triangulation tracking of the gasoline truck, as it moves southwest across the Los Angeles basin, are accurate. They can all be found on a modern map of Los Angeles. Even the view of the Los Angeles City Hall shows up at the appropriate time.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: After the prison break, the men are in their cabin hideout when the phone rings. Cody gets angry and rips it off the wall with several violent tugs yet the wire never moves. Once the phone comes completely loose, it's apparent that the phone was never hooked up to the wire in the first place.

Quotes:

Cody Jarrett: Big Ed, Great... Big... Ed. Know why they call him that? Because his ideas are big. Someday he's gonna get a really big one, about me. It'll be his last.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in The Wild (2006)

Soundtrack:

Five O'Clock Whistle

Made it Ma... Top of the world!

They sure don't make them like this any more!

Blessed with a touch of genius...

Alfred Hitchcock once said that you need three things in order to make a good movie : good script, good script and good script! This is a perfect example of that statement. It is as simple as that! This movie is made in 1949 and today,almost 55 years later, it still holds up and is up there with the best gangster dramas of all time. Many would disagree but frankly who cares? None of the modern gangster flicks would be the same without existence of this movie, thats for sure. The script is just great,the score is excellent and dialog is amazing!!! (try comparing it with the standards of today) Every third sentence coming out of Cody Jarretts mouth is endlessly quotable, this movie is Scarface of its time. Cagneys character in this movie is larger than life, one of the greatest gangster characters of all time... James Cagney - perhaps his greatest performance ever! I see that some fools criticize his performance,saying that it isn't great at all. My question to you is : How many movies from '40s have you seen? How wooden was the acting in those days? The answer - extremely. There were few great actors in those days, whose genius could hold up against the acting giants of today and one of them is surely James Cagney!

One of top 10-15 gangster movies of all time!