By David in TN
May 3, 2019 at 12:41:00 A.M. EDT
TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at 12 a.m. ET (and 10 a.m. ET Sunday Morning) is White Heat (1949). Directed by Raoul Walsh, with James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Edmond O'Brien, Steve Cochran, and Margaret Wycherly.
This is one of Cagney’s most famous roles, as a mother-fixated psycho killer (“Top of the World!”). Edmond O’Brien is an undercover T-man who hooks up with Cagney in prison and joins a breakout, followed by a major heist.
Film Noir Guide: “Cagney shines in his role as a psychopathic, mother-fixated killer, who fears he may follow in his old-man's footsteps and die ‘kicking and screaming in the nut-house.’ In the meantime, he suffers from excruciating and debilitating headaches that can be relieved only by attention from his loving Ma (Wycherly). O'Brien, Cagney’s cellmate and surrogate mother, is an undercover cop who plans their escape so he can trace the dough from Cagney’s last big heist—a daring, daytime train robbery. Mayo, usually portrayed as the all-American girl next door, is sensational as Cagney's femme fatale wife. Cochran plays the gangster’s rival, who is having an affair with Mayo. Cagney, who became a star with Public Enemy in 1931, marked his return to the genre with an explosive performance. This is an intense and explicitly violent film noir, with a climax that gives the ending of The Godfather a run for its money as the most memorable in the history of American crime movies.”
At the end, Cagney shouts one of the most famous lines ever.
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 am ET Sunday Morning) is Key Largo (1948). This is one of the most famous Noir films, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, with Edward G. Robinson chewing the scenery as a deported (what an odd concept) gangster. Claire Trevor plays Robinson's moll with Thomas Gomez, Harry Lewis, John Rodney, Dan Seymour, and Marc Lawrence as henchmen. John Huston directed.
Film Noir Guide: "When war hero Bogart stops in the Florida Keys to visit hotel owner Barrymore and Bacall, the father and widow of one of bis men, he winds up a hostage in the middle of a hurricane. Deported gangster Robinson and his gang (Gomez, Lewis, Rodney, and Seymour) have taken over the empty hotel while waiting for another mobster (Lawrence) to arrive to buy their counterfeit dough. They then plan to head for Cuba by boat. Unfortunately for them, a hurricane delays their departure. They entertain themselves by terrorizing their captives, depriving Robinson's alcoholic moll (Trevor) of her booze, knocking off a deputy sheriff, and refusing to allow local Seminole families to take shelter from the hurricane inside the hotel...Bogey is entertainingly low-key as the cynical war hero, but the movie belongs primarily to that other film noir icon, Robinson, who reprises his famous gangster roles with a delicious exhibition of viciousness and lewdness."
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