White Heat (1949)

The last of the classic Warner Bros. gangster pictures, with James Cagney in his meanest, toughest role as a tortured, psychotic killer whose only friend his mother. His Cody Jarrett seems interested in a life of crime primarily in that it allows him to kill people, which he does so frequently and without remorse; the money and rewards from the various jobs he pulls off are almost secondary. Virginia Mayo as his wife is at once conniving and sympathetic as she tries to find an escape from Cody's sadistic control. Edmond O'Brien is the undercover cop who ingratiates himself with Cody while in prison, infiltrating his gang and eventually leading to the gangster's downfall. The climactic shoot-out in a nocturnal, brightly-lit California oil refinery is a visually stunning set-piece that reaches a fever pitch under Raoul Walsh's masterful direction and recalls his expertly-staged stand-offs in films such as HIGH SIERRA and COLORADO TERRITORY. It's also an interesting study in contrasts of style and genre, a key transitional film between the classic Depression-era gangster films and the post-war crime dramas, with Cagney giving his old gangster persona a terrifying new psychological dimension, and as much emphasis on the procedures used by the police to bring the criminal to justice.

The Man I Love (1947)

Superb romantic musical melodrama, directed by Raoul Walsh for Warner Bros. at the peak of his career. Ida Lupino stars as a New York nightclub singer who travels to Long Beach to spend the holidays with her family but finds that they are all embroiled in their own personal dramas. She gets involved with an unscrupulous nightclub owner (Robert Alda) while falling in love with a tormented but brilliant pianist (Bruce Bennett), haunted by painful memories of his ex-wife.

THE MAN I LOVE is the work of a director who had developed his technique to a point where there is not a shot, not a single moment, out of place. It is an incredibly atmospheric piece, enhanced by the artifice of its studio-bound sets, rear projection and stylized dialogue that combine to create something really special -- a fantasy that is simultaneously grounded in realism. The mood is heightened by the evocative score, which features velvety, haunting arrangements of several pop standards (including the title song). It is a supreme example of the stylish entertainment that the Hollywood studio system, at the height of its powers, was capable of producing.

The Bowery (1933)

Boisterous, rowdy and fun pre-Code comedy-drama set against the nostalgic backdrop of New York's Lower East Side during the Gay '90s. Wallace Beery and George Raft star as a couple of rival saloon owners and volunteer fire company chiefs competing to be top dog in the neighborhood. The loose, sprawling story finds room for plenty of amusing and colorful threads: Raft's tender romance with Fay Wray, Beery's fatherly friendship with street kid Jackie Cooper, and Raft's publicity stunt to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

It's one of the very best films Raoul Walsh made during the decade, stylishly directed with a real flair for the period setting and vivid atmosphere of the Bowery, re-created in authentic detail on the studio backlot and nicely complemented by a musical score that's a virtual songbook of Gay '90s tunes. Tough and frank in its unflinching portrayal of the realities -- including sex, violence and casual racism -- of the rough-and-tumble milieu that it depicts, this is the kind of film that would become impossible to produce after the Production Code took full effect the following year.

The Big Trail

Fox has finally gotten around to releasing on DVD one of their most important early titles in its original format-Raoul Walsh's "The Big Trail", shot in the 70mm Grandeur process.

This is true epic. Watching the action unfold on screen, one is overwhelmed by the amount of visual information Walsh fills almost every frame with. Even seemingly simple setups with two or three of the principals talking to eachother contains what appears to be dozens of extras, animals, props and expansive landscape unfolding in the background. It's not an exaggeration to say that the film could be watched twice in order to catch every piece of the visual detail Walsh provides.

The plot is somewhat standard among pre-"Stagecoach" westerns. That is, it deals with ideas like Manifest Destiny; the noble efforts to move westward and settle the land. Before John Ford really defined the Western in generic terms with "Stagecoach" in 1939, Westerns tended to fall into one of two categories: either they played out as pure entertainment-the early films of William S. Hart, for instance, and later Tom Mix-or they were the cinematic equivalent of epic poetry, with beautifully composed long takes which the camera could linger on for as long as needed to convey the beauty and power of the landscape.

The silent era saw a rise in the epic films with a Western theme. The first, and most notable, was James Cruze's "The Covered Wagon", a film that was close to its director's heart, as his parents has been pioneers who traveled west with the wagon trains. The film set a new standard for scale, period accuracy (which, at the time, was hardly that far in the past), and most importantly, for the grand depiction of the landscape. John Ford made a follow-up film for Fox, "The Iron Horse", about the westward expansion of the transcontinental railroad. This magnificent epic provided a scale that was hard to match. Throughout the decade, the Western continued to thrive with films like "Tumbleweeds" by William S. Hart, dealing with the land rush.

The coming of sound posed some problems for the Western, as shooting outdoors was extremely difficult with the newfangled sound equipment. Raoul Walsh had shot one of the first outdoor talking Westerns, "In Old Arizona", in 1928. A little background information on Walsh is valuable in understanding how appropriate he was for this type of material. Born in 1887, Walsh worked a number of odd jobs before coming west to work in the cattle drives. Learning how to ride a horse, he got a job playing a Klansman in a stage production of Thomas Dixon's play "The Clansman", which would be filmed in 1914 by D.W. Griffith. Walsh worked on the film as well, both as an actor (he played John Wilkes Booth in the Ford Theatre sequence), and as assistant director. The same year that film was released, Walsh directed "Regeneration", a prototypical gangster film that gained him excellent notices. The 1910s and 20s were spent working in a variety of films, most notably directing "The Thief of Bagdad" for Douglas Fairbanks at United Artists, and "Sadie Thompson" with Gloria Swanson, which also featured the former actor Walsh in the leading role opposite Swanson.

1928 proved to be a pivotal year for Walsh. The coming of sound, and the fact that Walsh was working at a studio (Fox) that was pioneering the use of sound before most other studios, helped place him in the first rank of American filmmakers working in the sound medium. That year, he directed "In Old Arizona", a Western in which he also played the lead. This was cut short when, driving home from the location one night, a jackrabbit jumped through his car windshield. The shattered glass cost him an eye, and guaranteed the end of his acting career. (Irving Cummings finished direction of the film, now with Warner Baxter in the lead).

If Walsh's career as a leading man ended with "In Old Arizona", another leading man's career was born with "The Big Trail". A former propman, Marion Morrison adopted the screenname John Wayne for this, his first leading role. John Ford had recommended him for the part, and Walsh and the studio executives were willing to take a chance on him. In his first major role, Wayne carries himself very well. It's odd, watching the film today, to realize he'd spend the next eight years (and some forty films) in the lowest-grade Poverty Row westerns before Ford used him in "Stagecoach". Ford supposedly held a grudge against Wayne for making his starring debut in another director's film, but this seems a bit extreme. It is true, however, that Ford did not work with Wayne again until 1939, and that for whatever reason Wayne spent the interim period working in some of the lowest-grade productions imaginable.

"The Big Trail" has become something of a legendary film in the sense that it was a pioneering effort in widescreen cinematography. William Fox owned the patent on a process known as Grandeur, a 65mm precursor to CinemaScope, and employed it on this film. Due to the fact that entire theatres would have to be rebuilt to screen the widescreen version, Fox also insisted on shooting a standard Academy ratio version alongside the widescreen one. In addition to this already tremendous undertaking, three additional foreign language versions were also filmed simultaneously with different casts.

It has been said that Walsh used the wide screen more creatively here than most directors were in the 1950s, when CinemaScope became the standard. Incredibly, Walsh seems to have packed every frame with detail as far as the eye can see. This creates an incredible sense of "being there" amidst the action which is sorely lacking in the standard aspect ratio version.

The widescreen version has never been released on home video until now. It was apparently broadcast on AMC at some point in the 1990s, but the first DVD release contained just the standard version. The newest DVD release is a two-disc collection featuring both the standard version and the widescreen version. It is overall a gorgeous transfer, the only flaws being embedded in the film itself. Fox has provided some nice documentaries on the making of the film, as well as the careers of its director and star, and topping it off with a good commentary track by Richard Schickel.

Although the point is made in the documentaries, it's worth remembering that in 1930, many of the actors in the film had been around at the time of the pioneers' move westward. It was still quite recent history, and as a result, the film has an authenticity which can never again be matched. What's even more impressive is that the filmmakers were able to travel over such a variety of locations as were used in this film, and be able to film incredibly deep shots without picking up any signs of "modern" buildings. It would surely be impossible to make this film today, at least with the same variety of locations, as the landscape has surely been riddled with gas stations, fast food restaurants and other developments that would prevent it from being usable.

In so many ways, this film is an important historical document, not just of American cinema, but American history as well.