White Heat (1949). 114 minutes. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Starring James Cagney (as Arthur “Cody” Jarrett), Virginia Mayo (as Verna Jarrett), Edmond O’Brien (as Hank Fallon), Margaret Wycherly (as “Ma” Jarrett), Steve Cochran (as “Big Ed” Somers), John Archer (as Philip Evans), Wally Cassell (as Giovanni “Cotton” Valletti), and Fred Clark (as Daniel “The Trader” Winston). Screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts. Based on a story by Virginia Kellogg.
When James Cagney starred in the pre-Code gangster film The Public Enemy in 1931, little did he know that his on-screen thug persona would quickly become so iconic that he would still be starring in crime movies eighteen years later. Cagney largely considered himself a song-and-dance man, and it was challenging for him to escape from the shadow of The Public Enemy. Aren’t we lucky, however, that Cagney was repeatedly persuaded to act in the crime genre, because he gave us not only Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) in subsequent years but also the astonishing White Heat (1949). Cagney’s performance in White Heat as the outlaw Cody Jarrett is spectacular and complex. Cagney’s Cody is crippled by neurological impairment, heavy with psychological baggage, explosively violent, and twisted up with a perverse devotion to his gangster mother. However, although Cody is frequently described as a psychotic monster, both Cagney and the script by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts actually work to humanize him in ways that make the later White Heat as subversive as the earlier Public Enemy. We normally look at the Hollywood Production Code as having limited filmmakers’ creative freedoms when it went into effect in 1934, yet within the confines of the Code, Hollywood found new ways of subverting cultural norms. White Heat may have been created under the restrictive guidelines of the Code era, but it does the pre-Code era (and Cagney’s earlier films) proud.
The plot of White Heat can be summarized as a 114-minute police sting in which criminal mastermind Cody Jarrett jumps from one transgressive plot to another while the law quietly watches and waits to take him down. The film opens with a choreographed attack on a train in California led by Cody and his gang, during which they steal money and murder train workers who get in their way. Following the attack, it becomes clear to Cody, who is holed up with his mother along with his wife Verna, that the police are tailing him. He schemes to plead guilty for a crime in Springfield, Illinois that will bring a soft sentence and get him out of town for a while. However, the police catch wind of Cody’s scheme and send in Hank Fallon, a detective, to serve a sentence as a cellmate in the same prison, with the aim of extracting a confession from Cody about the train heist. While Cody is incarcerated, his mother is murdered in the outside world by a colleague. Eventually Cody escapes and takes revenge on the killer while plotting to steal money from a chemical plant. During the chemical plant heist, the police descend upon the Jarrett gang, overcoming every one of them except for Cody. He rushes up to the top of one of the plant’s towers as a wall of policemen shoot at him. Wounded and dying, he fires bullets into the towers, causing them to explode and presumably kill him as he exclaims, “Made it, Ma! Top o’the world!”
White Heat’s subversive contributions to the gangster genre begin with Cody Jarrett himself. A killer and hardened criminal whose ruthless crimes attract bountiful law enforcement attention, he murders in cold blood, is utterly callous, and for the most part sees no humanity in his companions (with the exception of his mother). He attempts to murder police officers, and he does murder engineers and conductors during the train heist that opens the film. He leaves a burned and bandaged man to freeze to death in a cabin in the California mountains (after promising to send a doctor to him—something Cody clearly has no intention of doing). Additionally, after he locks a man in a car trunk and the man begs for air, Cody announces that he will give him some air, then proceeds to shoot his gun into the trunk repeatedly, presumably killing the man. And of course, he blows up the chemical plant at the end of the film, seemingly to amass as much destruction as possible and to perish in a fantastic way, evading police capture in a wall of flames. Earlier in the film, we hear Cody’s wife Verna proclaim, “He ain’t human,” and in scenes like these, we might be tempted to agree.
If her comment went unchallenged, we might be more encouraged to think of Cody as an open-and-shut monster. Yet White Heat does a surprising amount of work to encourage us to see Cody’s evil deeds balanced against moments that suggest a complex interiority. In particular, Cody’s relationship with his mother is both a sickness and a way of highlighting a tender dimension to his personality. Ma Jarrett brings out a more appealing side of her son: one that is loyal, appreciative, even (momentarily) kind. Cody respects and admires her with what Detective Evans calls “a very psychopathic devotion,” in spite of or because of her evil, and he also dotes on her, caring for her above all others. His love for her is further demonstrated in his reaction to the news of her death and in the ways that he clearly favors her over Verna, who resents him deeply for that reason.
If we consider Cody’s tender feelings for his mother, we must also consider her feelings for him. In a movie with minimal demonstrations of love and affection, Ma Jarrett shows compassion to her son. This comes across most dramatically through the way that she cares for him during one of his migraine attacks. We must not forget, however, that she is modeled on Ma Barker, the 1930s criminal mastermind who taught her own sons how to rob banks and kill, and so she originates from a tradition of violent, hardcore gangster moms. Moreover, in spite of her sometimes innocuous ancillary role in the background making stew for the gang and shopping for her son’s favorite fruit, she is clearly helping to steer the direction of their criminal activity.
Their relationship, with all of its hang-ups, is well known to law enforcement. When Hank Fallon is assigned to go undercover in prison with Cody, Detective Evans lets him know that he should be prepared to function as Ma Jarrett’s surrogate as she is likely the only thing that will prevent Cody from dying like his father did—a rare moment of compassion from Evans, although presumably the reason he is interested in keeping Cody alive and sane is to extract a confession about the train heist, among other crimes. Nevertheless, Evans’s comment underscores both the extent to which Cody is dependent on his mother for support and the fact that his dependency is common knowledge. The family dynamic here is not easy to understand, but its effect on Cody is clearly profound, and its influence on him is unescapable. The fact that White Heat takes something as sacrosanct as the mother-child relationship, perverts it with a liberal dusting of murder and manipulation, and yet simultaneously insists on infusing it with a tender dimension is a testament to the movie’s commitment to disrupting social norms.
If we accept that Cody manifests more than a semblance of interiority through this relationship, then it is easier to accept White Heat’s other attempts to draw attention to the human condition as manifested in its protagonist. To explicitly address this issue, White Heat circles back to Verna’s “He ain’t human” comment when Hank Fallon, who has embedded himself in Cody’s gang, is caught sneaking away from their hideaway the night before the chemical plant heist. Hank is really attempting to inform the police of the planned heist, but he lies and tells Cody that he is trying to reach Los Angeles to connect with his wife, who may not know where he is now that he has broken out of prison. “I’m human, you know, like everyone else,” he tells Cody. “All right, kid, all right. You’re just lonesome—lonesome like me,” Cody replies.
It is fitting that their conversation strays towards the topic of humanity via Hank’s clichéd explanation for trespassing outside, for while Cody has caught Hank behaving suspiciously in the middle of the night in this scene, Hank has also caught Cody behaving strangely. Near a densely wooded area with the wind blowing through the branches, Cody quietly explains what he has been doing—he was talking to his dead mother in the forest, he says. What is more, he says that he liked doing it. But he knows that it is strange:
Cody Jarrett: Your mother alive?
Hank Fallon: No, no, she died before I even knew her.
Cody Jarrett: I was, uh, I was just walking around out there talking to Ma and—that sound funny to you?
Hank Fallon: Uh no, no.
Cody Jarrett: Some might think so. My old lady never had anything. Always on the run, always on the move. Some life. First there was my old man, died kickin’ and screamin’ in the nut house, then my brother, and after that was taking care of me. Always tryin’ to put me on top. “Top o’ the world,” she used to say. And then times when I’d be losing my grip, there she’d be, right behind me—pushing me back up again. Now—
Hank Fallon: Well anyway, she quit running, Cody.
Cody Jarrett: Yeah… That was—that was a good feeling out there, talking to her, just me and Ma. Good feeling. Liked it. Maybe I am nuts.
What is bothering Cody in that moment in the woods is not his murderous agenda for the next day, and unlike the Cagney of The Public Enemy, he does not appear slick, stylish, or immaculately put together. Instead, looking tired and using a soft voice, he contemplates his mental well-being. And as he does so in the peace of the gently blowing tree branches, he demonstrates self-awareness: he knows what people, including Hank, might say about him—is it true? Is he, as he says, “nuts”? Can they—the members of his gang, the doctors, law enforcement, the general public–can they say, or can we in the audience know for sure? In the end, Cody leaves his mental health an unanswered question and does not say what even he thinks, only observing that the conversation he experienced in the trees was pleasurable.
Cagney was catapulted to fame by The Public Enemy, and his performance in that film is iconic, yet that earlier gangster film did not afford him the opportunity to portray someone with the complex psychology of Cody Jarrett—a character who is no less murderous than pre-Code gangsters but who unlike them turns inward and reflects on his own sanity. Accordingly, Cody is labeled with diagnoses and assessments throughout the film, both of an amateur and a professional variety. While the prison doctor who evaluates him after his breakdown in the mess hall observes that Cody will “probably have recurrent periods of normal behavior,” he is, the doctor says, also fundamentally “violent, homicidal,” and there are plans to have prison psychiatrists commit Cody to an institution later that evening—plans that are thwarted inadvertently by his escape. In reality, Cody appears to be standing at a complex three-part neurological, mental, and spiritual crossroads: he has what appear to be horrific migraines, he loses control of his emotions and behaves erratically, and, independent of those two things, he is genuinely evil.
Cody’s neurological episodes appear to involve some form of hellacious, quick-onset migraines. According to Detective Evans, Cody faked the headaches in childhood for attention until they became real. Their mysterious origins do not make them any less real in adulthood, however, nor do their origins diminish the potential for his migraine episodes to move us. Indeed, rather than make him seem frightening or dangerous, the migraines actually have the effect of making him seem vulnerable. Look at what happens, for example, when he suddenly collapses with a headache in prison: he pleads with Hank Fallon, who is working nearby, to massage the back of his neck. Hank hides Cody so that no one can see him, and the two kneel pointing towards each other in a moment of touching intimacy while Hank grasps the base of Cody’s head and applies pressure. It is something we see Cody’s mother do for him in an earlier scene and so serves as a reminder of Cody’s juvenile dependence on parental care in moments of pain.
Cody’s migraine attacks, however, are not to be confused with his mental health episodes. Through Detective Evans we learn that Cody’s father was mentally ill and died in an institution. While the diagnosis of both father and son is unclear, nevertheless it is evident that Cody suffers from mental and emotional problems. In criticism, Cody is even regularly described as psychotic. It should be noted, however, that he does not give a whiff of seeing or hearing things that are not there or of being delusional, all of which are hallmarks of clinical psychosis. Labeling Cody as psychotic is a colloquial way of exaggerating and sidestepping the symptoms that he actually manifests, or, worse, a way of trying to attribute his evil qualities to a mental health diagnosis.
Even without an accurate or comprehensive psychiatric assessment of Cody, we can still observe that his psychological issues are on display throughout the film. For example, when he loses control in the prison mess hall after learning from another prisoner that his mother is dead, we see him at his most erratic. He rushes along the top of the prison dining table, overturns plates of food, propels himself onto the floor, punches out guards, and finally ends up being hauled away while he convulses violently, weeps, and emits sounds that are not proper words but are rooted instead in some deep wound of the soul. Apparently, director Raoul Walsh did not inform the cafeteria full of hundreds of extras that this would be the primary recorded activity on set, and their stunned silence as James Cagney thrashes and whimpers underscores the extent to which Cody is experiencing an other-worldly break that his fellow prisoners do not know how to respond to. By the time we see him in a straitjacket in the prison medical ward, it is clear he has regained his faculties and has carefully plotted out an escape from the prison complex. But it is hard to believe that Cody is as in control of his situation as he would like his colleagues to think.
The complex vulnerability that Cody displays is important to consider when we compare him with his opposition, for White Heat is not merely a gangster movie; it is a gangster movie in which the other side—the side of law enforcement—has its own turbo-charged energy. Consider how much police technology we see: cars triangulating, officers pinpointing target cars through transmitters, transmitters built out of radios (we even see Hank Fallon create one), maps, car phones, revolving circular car antennae that look like corkscrew tops. At one point we hear a detailed explanation of transmitters, oscillators, and receivers and how they will interact to enable the detectives to catch Cody escaping from prison; the plan is drawn up on a map and the detectives crunch numbers to demonstrate. There is a long sequence when Ma Jarrett goes out shopping for strawberries for her son and is tailed by police that exemplifies the police technology in use. Sure, her car is tailed in part through the old method of sliding a piece of white fabric along her rear car bumper, but the reason the squad can follow the sharp Ma, who is an expert police dodger, for as long as they can is due to the intense coordination between police cars: using a map and a car phone, the lead detective designates one car Car A, another Car B, a third Car C. The three cars manage to follow her across town, taking direction from the lead detective and trading off from street to street.
The tailing scene is indicative of the overall mindset of law enforcement in White Heat: the police make plans with strategy, instructions, and an almost scientific-like rigor. Even when the police learn that Cody is not breaking out of prison as planned, detective Evans rapidly rattles off to another officer what he needs to undo the plan that the police had in place: they need to remove the oscillator from the police car, they need plane tickets for a 10 o’clock flight, they need a car at the airport. There are steps, there is a process. There is also the order, logic, and regimentation of the prison where Cody serves time for the Springfield crime: cells, blocks, work time, meal time, time in cells, time in the yard.
Much like the regimented prison, the order and methodology involved in the police work we see is mechanical, oppressive—and on such a large scale. When the state is after you, White Heat seems to say, it will pursue you with all means available to it, squashing out criminals with ten times the orchestration, ten times the people, and ten times the bullet power. The state will even take a law-abiding detective (Hank Fallon) and compel him to go into prison for an indefinite period as an inmate (and not for the first time) just to catch a felon further incriminating himself. When Hank tells Cody on that night in the California trees that he is leaving to deliver a message to his wife, we might laugh—for not only do we know that Hank has no wife, but the very idea that the government machinery he is a part of, as it is expressed in this film, would permit him to have enough of a private life to sustain such a relationship is absurd. Hank’s humanity comes into question as much as Cody’s does, as Hank sheds all aspects of himself to live in prison under a false identity, nonchalantly putting on prison’s awfulness as if it were a new hat or some other aspect of a detective’s disguise.
To be fair, Cody’s team makes plans, too—to rob the train, to steal the chemical plant payroll, and to extract Cody from jail. In one sense, White Heat is about two masterful teams coordinating campaigns against each other, competing to see who can outwit whom. But the exacting nature of policework in this movie is pitted against more than just another criminal plot: the neat and orderly methods of the police are in contrast with the messiness of Cody and his gang. While the police strategize, conduct research, and implement technology to stop Cody—methodically plotting the details and scientifically gathering the data they need—Cody erupts in mental health episodes, headaches that cannot be quelled, convulsive laughter, homicidal rage, and cruel vengeance, all while dealing with an unhealthy mother fixation. Law enforcement’s organization penchant may reach its peak in the prison scenes but even there cannot contain Cody’s energy, and the jumble of emotions that oozes out of him ultimately causes him to more closely resemble us than his police contemporaries claim.
The binary nature of cop and criminal in White Heat is thus provocatively figured in the dual nature of the film’s title. In chemistry and metal work, the term “white heat” is used to describe a heat so intense that it emits a white light; but more colloquially, “white heat” means “a state of passion.” We can see how both law enforcement and Cody are bound together in the title: observing a state of white heat in a lab or metal shop, for example, sounds like something the police in White Heat might do, but frenetically existing in a state of metaphorical white heat feels more akin to the reality of the gangsters in this film. And it makes sense that the two would collide in the title, for they collide on the screen as well, and the film actually ends at a chemical plant, where seemingly everything, including Cody, is consumed by fire and explosions.
In the end, as Cody is extinguished by the police at the chemical plant, he acknowledges his own climax, shouting out “Made it, Ma! Top o’ the world!” (a variation of the cherished expression of Cody and his mother). The police are victorious, and lest Cody should have the last word, White Heat cuts back to Hank (now a part of the police ambush) and his boss, Philip Evans:
Philip Evans: Cody Jarrett…
Hank Fallon: He finally got to the top of the world… and it blew right up in his face.
Make no mistake: these lines are the Code’s way of containing Cody Jarrett, of keeping a lid on his wild criminal abandon by denying him the fine line. But we should wonder, does it feel good to see and hear Hank and his colleagues win? Moreover, do they really triumph? As the chemical plant explodes all around Cody, emanating its own version of white heat, how would the police even begin to contain Cody’s destruction? When the screen is overtaken with images of fire, it is clear that Cody’s imprint is immense and everywhere, and that he is uncontainable. In this way, even though Cody Jarrett is firmly planted in the Code era, his career erupts like the outrageous trajectories of earlier Hollywood gangsters in Little Caesar (1931) or Scarface (1932), albeit with a self-awareness and vulnerability that feels new for this genre. White Heat demonstrates that Hollywood could take the gangster out of the pre-Code era, but taking the pre-Code out of the Hollywood gangster was not such an easy task.