In White Heat (1949), James Cagney played Cody Jarrett, a volatile gang leader whose devotion to his mother and whose violent temper drive the film to its famous climax. Directed by Raoul Walsh, the film was Cagney’s return to the gangster genre after the war, and it is darker and more psychological than his 1930s crime films.
Cody is not a simple villain. He suffers from headaches and paranoia, loves his mother fiercely, and is capable of both tenderness and sudden brutality. Cagney played all of those contradictions at full intensity, making Cody both frightening and strangely sympathetic.
White Heat ends with Cody on top of a gas tank, shouting his defiance as the tank explodes. It is one of the most famous endings in film noir, and it confirmed that Cagney, nearly twenty years after The Public Enemy, was still the definitive screen gangster.