White Heat

Ten years later, a flaming farewell to the 30s gangster picture, scripted like a Greek tragedy on speed. Raoul Walsh supplies the Freudian direction, Cagney the daring acting and sizzling star power. WHITE HEAT is primal, flamboyant stuff--close your eyes and you could be watching a 30s picture. But don't close them more than momentarily; the film's visuals make it linger in the mind's eye.

Cagney plays psychopathic gangster Cody Jarrett, Margaret Wycherly the mother who drives him to crime and whose death makes him go literally berserk. Virginia Mayo is Jarrett's wife, who has a hankering for gang member Big Ed (Steve Cochran), Edmond O'Brien plays a police inf...