Right from 'Regeneration' every Raoul Walsh film is a must-see. Nevertheless, I find this picture a weaker effort of his. Which is not to say I don't love it as much as everybody else, but I found some of it's plotting unnecessarily slapdash, and get the feeling it was over-polished in the editing and left the lot with the tires overinflated for maximum box office appeal. The "Top of the world, Ma!"- Jimmy Cagney classic is actually not as old as I'd thought, released in 1949. One of those great albeit deeply unconvincing Edmond O'Brien roles as a narc who gets in too close with Cagney. Two things are noteworthy about this movie. First is that the big score scheduled for the end of the film is premised upon the idea that a large chemical firm pays its numerous employees in cash on payday. This struck me as mighty unlikely. Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one and paychecks are less than 60 years old. And to my jaded astonishment O'Brien's character also lets fly with "we got him by the short hairs!" complete with finger motions; was Hayes' out sick? Mind bogglingly risqué for its time, I felt, and nearly subliminal in its inclusion. Several other instances beggar belief; yet they are balanced out by our understanding of them as psychologically relevant character details, and a wealth of other more satisfying scenes. Really, I think the family dynamic, particularly in the first half of the film, show Walsh's greatness: the tension between Ma & the Moll, both in the hideout and down at the precinct: fabulous.
There seems to be some nuanced Freudian symbolism in Cody's use of a Trojan horse in his final caper; moreover a great deal of attention is paid by everyone to Cody's mercurial inner states. In the end, the hyper-industrialized landscape of the chemical factory where Cody's apotheosis takes its eponymous place as a fireball in the sky, is also seen to be where the White Heat's original genius loci inside Cody's head (in the form of both his devastating self-inflicted migraines, and raging criminal ambitions) turns inside out, transmuted to spectacular combustion, sheer effect. "Top of the world, Ma!" is revealed as an incantation.
There seems to be some nuanced Freudian symbolism in Cody's use of a Trojan horse in his final caper; moreover a great deal of attention is paid by everyone to Cody's mercurial inner states. In the end, the hyper-industrialized landscape of the chemical factory where Cody's apotheosis takes its eponymous place as a fireball in the sky, is also seen to be where the White Heat's original genius loci inside Cody's head (in the form of both his devastating self-inflicted migraines, and raging criminal ambitions) turns inside out, transmuted to spectacular combustion, sheer effect. "Top of the world, Ma!" is revealed as an incantation.