James Cagney returned to Warner Brothers after a five-year absence in a burst of fiery glory as Cody Jarrett, a cocky gangster hell-bent on murder and mayhem. In his 1931 incarnation as “public enemy” Tom Powers, the gangster's immoral life of crime was depicted as a product of the Depression era. In 1949, to an America becoming aware of Freud, the gangster was, in the studio's words, “a homicidal paranoiac with a mother fixation.” Society was no longer held responsible for the existence of crime; instead, in a switch from a social to a psychological explanation, a misguided, well-intentioned mom was saddled with the blame. When director Raoul Walsh-who had earlier chronicled the rise (The Roaring Twenties) and fall (High Sierra) of the gangster-moved inside his mind, he didn't abandon the world of physical action. This is a fast-paced, violent classic of the American gangster genre.