White Heat

White Heat

White Heat clearly belongs within Shatzs category of genres of order.

How far do you agree with this statement?

This is an exiting essay to write for a number of reasons. For one it

is an honour to follow in the footsteps of Raul Walsh understanding the

motivations that brought him to direct White Heat in the way he did it.

For another reason is wonderful having the possibility to describe it

through the Shatz^s module that can describe perfectly every aspect of

a selected movie. Because it is essentially a narrative system, a film

genre can be examined in terms of its fundamental structural

components: plot, character, setting, thematics and so on. Shatz

divided Hollywood film genres in two main categories, these are

distinguished by completely different characteristics. As he said:

^Each genre represents a distinct problem-solving strategy that

repeatedly addresses basic cultural contradictions^ (Shatz, 1948: 34).

He defined certain genres like screwball comedy, family melodrama,

musical and so on as rites of integration. Those films are centred upon

a doubled or collective her! o set into a ^civilised^ space, the main

problems are emotional and the resolution is always by love. Other

genres centred on an individual male such as Western, gangster,

detective, etc. appertain to the genre of order category. The

protagonist (individual male) ^is the focus of dramatic conflicts

within a setting of contested, ideologically instable space. Conflicts

within these genres are externalised, translated into violence, and

usually resolved through the elimination of some threat to the social

order^ (Shatz, 1948: 34). At the end of the film the protagonist

always leaves the contested space either by his departure or death and

he always maintains his individuality and he doesn^t learn about values

and lifestyle of the community. The principal thematics within this

genre are the mediation-redemption, the male macho code, isolated

self-reliance and utopia-as-promise. White Heat is a classic gangster

and was directed, as I said, by Raul Walsh in 1949. It stands at the

crux between the 1930^s gangster movies and the post^war film noir. The

plot is briefly this: James Cagney plays Cody Jarrett, a psychotic who

dreams of being on "top of the world". Inadvertently leaving clues

behind after a railroad heist, Jarrett becomes the target of federal

agents, which send an undercover agent (O^Brien) to infiltrate the

Jarrett gang. While Cody sits in prison on a deliberately trumped-up

charge (he confesses to one crime to provide him an alibi for the

railroad robbery), he befriends Fallon (O^Brien), who poses as a

hero-worshipping hood who's always wanted to work with Jarrett. Busting

out of prison with Fallon, Jarrett regroups his gang to mastermind a