L'enfer est à lui (1949) watch online HD

The character of Cody Jarrett was based on New York murderer Francis Crowley, who engaged in a pitched battle with police in the spring of 1931 at the age of 18. Murdered on January 21, 1932, his last words were: "Send my love to my mother."

If the surprise expressed by James Cagney's fellow inmates during "the telephone game" scene in the prison dining room appears real, it's because it is. Director Raoul Walsh didn't tell the rest of the cast what was about to happen, so Cagney's outburst caught them by surprise. In fact, Walsh himself didn't know what Cagney had planned; the scene as written wasn't working, and Cagney had an idea. He told Walsh to put the two biggest extras playing cons in the mess-hall next to him on the bench (he used their shoulders to boost himself onto the table) and to keep the cameras rolling no matter what.

The unusually close relationship between Cody Jarrett and his domineering mother was inspired by real life bank robbers Kate Barker (aka "Ma Barker") and her sons.

The movie's line "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" was voted as the #18 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).

Although James Cagney found this to be a good picture on a number of levels, in his 1985 autobiography Cagney called the film "another cheapjack job" because of its limited shooting schedule and the studio's decision to "put everybody in it they could get for six bits." Cagney was particularly irritated by the fact that he pressed them to cast his old friend Frank McHugh in the small role of Tommy in order to bring a touch of humour and lightness to the otherwise heavy piece. According to the star, Warners repeatedly agreed to do it, putting Cagney off until the first day of shooting when he was told McHugh wasn't available. Cagney found out later McHugh had never even been asked.

The train robbery which opens the film, appears to have been closely based on the robbery of Southern Pacific's "Gold Special" by the DeAutremont Brothers in 1923.

Edmond O'Brien was rather in awe of James Cagney. He found out how generous an actor and gentle a person Cagney could be. In a close-up the two were playing together, O'Brien felt Cagney standing with increasing pressure on the top of O'Brien's right foot, forcing the younger actor to move in that direction. O'Brien realized if he had not done so, he would have been out of frame and Cagney would have had the scene to himself. When the cameras were rolling, Cagney would look like "an angry tiger," but as soon as Raoul Walsh yelled cut, the star would quietly go up to O'Brien with a poem he had written and ask him in a whisper, "Would you mind telling me what you think of this?" When it came time to return to work, Cagney would plead, "Please, don't tell anyone about it."

All the locations and bearings radioed back and forth during the triangulation tracking of the gasoline truck, as it moves southwest across the Los Angeles basin, are accurate. They can all be found on a modern map of Los Angeles. Even the view of the Los Angeles City Hall shows up at the appropriate time.

Ranked #4 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Gangster" in June 2008.

Virginia Mayo revealed in an interview that James Cagney was hiding in a different spot than where she had been told he would be during the scene when they are reunited after he's been in prison. He then deliberately missed his cue, causing her shock and fear to be real. She said for a few seconds, she was actually afraid he was going to kill her.

It was James Cagney himself who had the idea of making Cody psychotic. Cagney attributed his performance to his father's alcoholic rages, which he had witnessed as a child, as well as someone that he had seen on a visit to a mental hospital.

In his autobiography Cagney by Cagney (1985), the actor said he found the script "very formula...the old knock-down-drag-'em-out again, without a touch of imagination or originality." Finding Cody Jarrett to be "just another murderous thug," Cagney said he suggested to the writers to pattern the character of Jarrett and his mother after the legendary outlaws Ma Barker and her boys and to make Cody a psychotic. It has also been said that Cagney improvised some of his dialogue and decided to play Jarrett as a man plagued by blinding migraines (that only his mother could soothe).

Virginia Mayo praised co-star James Cagney's performance, saying he should have won an Oscar for it.

The train robbery was filmed using the former Southern Pacific tunnel in Chatsworth, CA. The Line is now owned by Union Pacific and was the location of a tragic 2008 head-on collision that killed 25 people.

Jack L. Warner believed that the scene in which Cody goes berserk in the mess hall after learning of the death of his mother would be too expensive to film and asked Raoul Walsh to film it in a chapel instead. Walsh, however, realized the dramatic potential of the scene and assuaged Warner's budgetary concerns by shooting it in three hours.

Madonna's song "White Heat", off of her 1986 album "True Blue" used this film as a backdrop, with some lines from the film used throughout the song.

James Cagney's first gangster film since Les fantastiques années 20 (1939).

Included among the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.

Edmond O'Brien had been promised equal billing with James Cagney, but at the last minute the studio decided against it. Since Cagney hadn't made many movies since leaving Warner Bros. in the early '40s, publicists thought if audiences saw "Cagney" and "O'Brien" billed together, they would assume it was a reissue of one of the six movies Cagney made with 'Pat O'Brien' between 1934 and 1940 and avoid the film.

This marked the first time James Cagney had worked for Warner Bros. since La glorieuse parade (1942). "Movies should be entertaining, not blood baths," he said in the last days of his Warners contract. "I'm sick of carrying a gun and beating up women." He formed his own production company with his brother William, and for the next five years their pictures were distributed by United Artists. There were, however, only four films in those years, none of them very successful financially. So Cagney returned to Warner Brothers with a degree of autonomy (his production company remained intact) and made the kind of "blood bath" he had turned his back on seven years earlier. "It's what people want me to do," he grumbled. "Someday, though, I'd like to make just one picture kids could go see."

James Cagney and Virginia Mayo followed their turn as the murderous married couple with a very different kind of picture, the musical Les Cadets de West Point (1950).

James Cagney took credit for having the idea for the scene in which Cody sits in his mother's lap. He said he told Raoul Walsh, "Let's see if we can get away with this," and Walsh agreed. But in his 1974 autobiography "Each Man in His Time" (which film writer Leonard Maltin has called "highly entertaining fiction with an occasional nod at the truth"), Walsh took credit for the idea and said the scene worked because Cagney and Margaret Wycherly made it so convincing.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

Location work was done in the California towns of Van Nuys and Chatsworth (in a railroad tunnel). The explosive finale was shot in Torrance, Calif.

White Heat is based on a 1923 train robbery by the D'Autrement brothers. A month before it was released, Paramount released "Special Agent", a film based on the same robbery but keeping a bit closer to the actual facts.

Film debut of Ford Rainey.

Ford Rainey made his film debut as Zuckie Hommel, one of Cody's gang members.

After The Cop was shot in his right shoulder, He appeared in the office drinking coffee with Edmund O'Brien. First he was drinking coffee from a very light colored cup,Then reverse angle A dark cup appeared in his hand. So when they cut from over the shoulder angle to front angle, the cup goes light, dark, light, dark, light, dark.

Jim Thorpe: the sports legend is one of the cons in the "telephone game".

At the time of filming, special effects were not yet using squibs (tiny explosives that simulate the effects of bullets). The producers employed skilled marksmen who used low-velocity bullets to break windows or show bullets hitting near the characters. In the factory scene, James Cagney was missed by mere inches.

Held the record for largest number of camera set ups in one scene; for the scene in prison mess hall where Cody Jarrett finds out his mother is dead.

When Cody gets the news of his mother's death, James Cagney plays his first reaction merely looking down, building into the emotional explosion. Years later he explained to Los Angeles Times film critic Charles Champlin, "That first agony is private. If I'd looked up right away and started bellowing, it would have been stock company, 1912."

When Cody Jarrett's nymphomaniac wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) warns her lover Big Ed Somers (Steve Cochran) that Cody "ain't human" - that bullets won't stop him if he's in a vengeful mood - Big Ed scoffs, "Plug him and he drops, same as anybody else." But Cody doesn't drop when special agent Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien) "plugs" him multiple times atop the oil refinery storage tank at the film's climax.

Midway through, during the escape from the Illinois penitentiary, when Cody Jarrett (James Cagney) warns his confederates and hostages, "Now, in case we don't make it, I got six slugs in this gun, one for each of us," director Raoul Walsh's camera rests briefly on the startled face of Tommy Ryley (Robert Osterloh), who will later be gunned down by Cody for offering surrender to the police during the oil refinery shootout at the film's climax.