The Entrance of the Star

White Heat starts with no fanfare. A car shrieks along a curvy road. And then suddenly there’s James Cagney – big close-up.

I like a movie that tosses us into the action, I like a movie that is centered on story, not stars.

There’s definitely an artful way to show us the star of the film for the first time.

Think of our first glimpse of Bogie in Casablanca – which is one of my favorite “first time we see the star” moments in all cinematic history.

You see his hand. Writing “O.K. Rick” on the bill. Then you just see the side of his arm – gently, he taps the top of the chess piece – (brilliant – you can tell that the disembodied man is thinking about something, just in how he taps that chess piece) – then he picks up the burning cigarette in the ashtray – and brings it up to his lips for a drag. And then we see his face – the face we have been WAITING to see since the movie began.

It’s a great example of putting off the appearance of the star of the film. To keep the audience hungry for him, and curious. Like: the first 20 minutes of the fillm, we hear about Rick, everyone talks about him, we know Bogie is in this film, we want to see Bogie – but they make us wait.

Great.

But then there’s the trend NOW of loooong drawn-out star appearances – they emerge from a car, looking fabulous, the camera dwelling on their freakish beauty, maybe it’s in slow-mo, sunglasses on … I don’t know. I’ll have to think more about it, what it all means, what the trend actually is. It is HIGHLY objectifying film-making, if you know what I mean. In those moments, they aren’t human beings in the middle of a story … they are objectified celebrities, and the way the entrances are filmed tells us: Oooooh, here they are, they’re here! Which has nothing to do with the story.

So boom – there’s Jimmy Cagney – with no big star entrance – I loved it. It seemed so humble, so uninterested in all of the trappings.

In my opinion, Cagney has that thing. Everyone defines it in different ways, and we could talk about it til the cows come home. But it’s that THING that happens between the camera and certain actors.

Not all actors. But certain actors.

He doesn’t need to do one damn thing. And we are inside his brain, we feel his feelings, we see him thinking – he draws us in … he doesn’t speak all that much … but he doesn’t appear to be DOING anything.

There’s one moment he has with his gun moll wife, late into the picture, where he goes to hug her goodnight, and she winces – afraid for a second that he’s going to belt her.

Watch Cagney’s response. Watch what he does in response to her flinch.

I rewound it a couple times. It’s so real – you can’t fake something like that.

You see him look … a tiny bit baffled, and hurt … like a little boy. It’s so subtle. Then he says, “Hey … hey … I ain’t gonna hurt you …” But he’s not defending himself in the way he says it. He’s not angry. He is truly confused as to why she would be afraid of him.

This is why the character is psychotic.

Cagney gets inside of that brilliantly.

And then there’s his freak-out in the prison, when he gets words that his mother is dead. Does anyone remember that scene? GOD.

To describe his reaction (Cagney plays a character who is … to say the least … completely connected to his mother … there’s one creepy great scene where he, a grown man, in his late 40s at that time, I think, sits on her lap …) Anyway – to describe his reaction would be difficult. It is a complete and mentally deranged response to grief – the sounds he makes – the sounds he makes, people … Spontaneous tears came to my eyes, listening to those SOUNDS.

It’s beyond good. It’s one of those moments that raises the bar for everybody else, for actors everywhere. You know? It just doesn’t get any better than that.

And there’s nothing planned about it.

His breakdown in the prison cafeteria doesn’t look like a moment that he, the conscious actor, planned and worked on. It looks like the moment is actually HAPPENING to him. Huge difference.

Bravo!