TCM Greatest Classic Film Collection: Gangsters - James Cagney (White Heat / City for Conquest / Each Dawn I Die / G Men) Review
WHITE HEAT (1949) "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" Cagney's Cody Jarrett--a psychotic thug devoted to his tough-as-nails mother--is the searing centerpiece of this blazing, fast-paced thriller. CITY FOR CONQUEST (1940) Club fighter Cagney turns pro to bankroll his composer brother's dream of writing the great New York City symphony. But life pulls the sidewalk out from under them in an intensely moving saga co-starring Ann Sheridan. EACH DAWN I DIE (1939) Two of the screen's famed tough guys--Cagney as a reporter framed for manslaughter and George Raft as a big-house racketeer--headline this prison movie that casts a reform-minded eye on the brutalizing effects of life in the slammer. "G" MEN (1935) Four years after starring in The Public Enemy, Cagney waged on-screen war against the nation's public enemies as a zealous FBI agent in a movie "fast, gutsy, as simplistic and powerful as a tabloid headline" (Time Out Film Guide).
