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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.
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