"White Heat" has a complex if ingenious plot. Arthur Cody Jarrett is the leader of a gang of criminals who have carried out a train robbery during which four men were shot dead. It becomes clear, however, to Jarrett that the police suspect him of this crime, so in order to throw them off the scent he flies to Illinois where he confesses to a quite different robbery in which he had no involvement at all. The two robberies took place on the same day, so Jarrett believes he has the perfect alibi. If he was robbing a hotel in Illinois, he could not have been robbing a train in California. The Illinois robbery involved no killings, so only carries a relatively light sentence.
The police, however, are aware that Jarrett's guilty plea to the Illinois robbery is not genuine, and infiltrate an agent, posing as a convict under the assumed name "Vic Pardo", into the prison where Jarrett is serving his sentence. The idea is that Pardo will be placed into the same cell as Jarrett to see if he will talk about the California robbery. Events then take an unexpected turn. Unknown to Jarrett his lieutenant Big Ed is also the lover of his beautiful young wife, Verna, and has ambitions to take control of the gang. Ed has an associate inside the prison, whom he orders to kill Jarrett. Jarrett's life is saved, however, by Pardo's intervention. Jarrett's elderly mother, to whom he is very close, finds out about the attempt on her son's life and swears to get revenge, although he begs her not to. The old lady confronts Big Ed and Verna but is shot dead by them. Jarrett, maddened by grief at his mother's death, escapes from prison, taking Pardo with him as a hostage. Jarrett resumes his career as a criminal, leading to a final showdown with the police.
"White Heat" is sometimes characterised as a film noir, although I prefer to think of it, and other similar gangster films, as "not quite noir". Although its subject-matter is crime, and it uses the dramatic lighting effects and photography that were characteristic of film noir, it lacks another typical noir characteristic, an atmosphere of moral ambiguity. It is a cops-and-robbers thriller with the moral boundaries very clearly defined; the cops are good and the robbers are bad. Those parts of the film which deal with the FBI could almost have been written by J. Edgar Hoover himself. The government agents are clean-cut, brave, honourable, incorruptible and a good deal smarter and more resourceful than the likes of Jarrett give them credit for.
That does not, however, make "White Heat" an inferior film. Today, a film with such clear-cut moral distinctions would be regarded at best naïve as and simplistic and at worst as disguised government propaganda, so used have we become to films which portray the police either as corrupt (e.g. "L.A. Confidential") or as hilariously incompetent (e.g. the "Police Academy" series) or as brutal and heavy-handed (numerous examples from "Dirty Harry" onwards). A crime film, however, which expresses a moral preference for law enforcers over law breakers is not necessarily suspect, any more than is a war film which shows the Allies as being morally better than the Nazis.
Although the film's sympathies are very much with the forces of law and order, it is the villainous characters rather than the virtuous ones that stand out- Virginia Mayo's Verna, Margaret Wycherly's Ma and, most of all, James Cagney's superb performance as Jarrett. He is a psychopathic criminal who will kill without remorse anyone who gets in his way, be they policemen or innocent bystanders, or even members of his own gang. (He leaves to die one of the gang who was injured during the train robbery). He has no feelings for Verna and treats her coldly and callously, doubtless the reason why she turned to Big Ed for comfort. His one good quality is his deep love for his mother, yet even this can often seem suspect. A word frequently used about it is "oedipal", which implies that it is not so much a redeeming virtue as a symptom of his underlying psychiatric illness. There are two particularly memorable scenes in the film. The first is the one where he learns of his mother's death while in prison. Cagney brings an intensity to this scene that makes Jarrett's rage seem particularly frightening. The second is the famous "top of the world" scene, the final shoot-out with the police in the chemical plant, in which Jarrett, despite his vicious character, achieves a certain insane grandeur. In Jarrett's disordered mind he really is "top of the world".
When I reviewed the original version of "Get Carter" on this website, I stated that I had never seen another film which better reveals the sterility and futility of the criminal lifestyle. Having now seen "White Heat", I can say that "Get Carter" now has a rival in this regard. 9/10
The police, however, are aware that Jarrett's guilty plea to the Illinois robbery is not genuine, and infiltrate an agent, posing as a convict under the assumed name "Vic Pardo", into the prison where Jarrett is serving his sentence. The idea is that Pardo will be placed into the same cell as Jarrett to see if he will talk about the California robbery. Events then take an unexpected turn. Unknown to Jarrett his lieutenant Big Ed is also the lover of his beautiful young wife, Verna, and has ambitions to take control of the gang. Ed has an associate inside the prison, whom he orders to kill Jarrett. Jarrett's life is saved, however, by Pardo's intervention. Jarrett's elderly mother, to whom he is very close, finds out about the attempt on her son's life and swears to get revenge, although he begs her not to. The old lady confronts Big Ed and Verna but is shot dead by them. Jarrett, maddened by grief at his mother's death, escapes from prison, taking Pardo with him as a hostage. Jarrett resumes his career as a criminal, leading to a final showdown with the police.
"White Heat" is sometimes characterised as a film noir, although I prefer to think of it, and other similar gangster films, as "not quite noir". Although its subject-matter is crime, and it uses the dramatic lighting effects and photography that were characteristic of film noir, it lacks another typical noir characteristic, an atmosphere of moral ambiguity. It is a cops-and-robbers thriller with the moral boundaries very clearly defined; the cops are good and the robbers are bad. Those parts of the film which deal with the FBI could almost have been written by J. Edgar Hoover himself. The government agents are clean-cut, brave, honourable, incorruptible and a good deal smarter and more resourceful than the likes of Jarrett give them credit for.
That does not, however, make "White Heat" an inferior film. Today, a film with such clear-cut moral distinctions would be regarded at best naïve as and simplistic and at worst as disguised government propaganda, so used have we become to films which portray the police either as corrupt (e.g. "L.A. Confidential") or as hilariously incompetent (e.g. the "Police Academy" series) or as brutal and heavy-handed (numerous examples from "Dirty Harry" onwards). A crime film, however, which expresses a moral preference for law enforcers over law breakers is not necessarily suspect, any more than is a war film which shows the Allies as being morally better than the Nazis.
Although the film's sympathies are very much with the forces of law and order, it is the villainous characters rather than the virtuous ones that stand out- Virginia Mayo's Verna, Margaret Wycherly's Ma and, most of all, James Cagney's superb performance as Jarrett. He is a psychopathic criminal who will kill without remorse anyone who gets in his way, be they policemen or innocent bystanders, or even members of his own gang. (He leaves to die one of the gang who was injured during the train robbery). He has no feelings for Verna and treats her coldly and callously, doubtless the reason why she turned to Big Ed for comfort. His one good quality is his deep love for his mother, yet even this can often seem suspect. A word frequently used about it is "oedipal", which implies that it is not so much a redeeming virtue as a symptom of his underlying psychiatric illness. There are two particularly memorable scenes in the film. The first is the one where he learns of his mother's death while in prison. Cagney brings an intensity to this scene that makes Jarrett's rage seem particularly frightening. The second is the famous "top of the world" scene, the final shoot-out with the police in the chemical plant, in which Jarrett, despite his vicious character, achieves a certain insane grandeur. In Jarrett's disordered mind he really is "top of the world".
When I reviewed the original version of "Get Carter" on this website, I stated that I had never seen another film which better reveals the sterility and futility of the criminal lifestyle. Having now seen "White Heat", I can say that "Get Carter" now has a rival in this regard. 9/10