You learn a lot about a noir character by their coffee: sugar? cream? more whiskey than caffeine?
I’m cataloging every noir scene where coffee plays a role — rote and ritual, soul-dark or cream and sugar, served from dingy diners to shiny penthouses.
Off the bat: despite its absolutely godawfully atrocious conclusion (which makes me despair for women in general and Katherine Hepburn’s Tess in particular), I’m not here to argue Woman of the Year is a noir.
I’m making this one-time exception slash parenthetical because the scene is delightful, Hepburn is slapstickily excellent, and it involves my favourite method of making coffee.
Plus, Tess begins the foreign-to-her rituals of coffee and breakfast preparation whilst wearing a sumptuous shoulder-padded fur coat!
Honestly if the whole film revolved around her doing this on the weekends while being a polyglot charmer the rest of her life, I’d be happy.
Alas.
Anyways . . .
*several minutes later*
The fur coat has been shed, Tess’s husband has emerged to be fed and watered as behooves a husband (or some such bullshit), and everything from the toast to the siphon pot has entered into mortal danger.
Ignore the fact the coffee COULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT when you look at how much water Tess had put it — they literally make a point of her putting one single teacup of water in as a joke:
and as shown in the bit of business with the stove, (well performed but awkwardly shot since we mostly see the fur coat instead of Tess’s face and actions) there’s nowhere near enough water to overflow no matter how long you boil it, even if siphons did work like that . . . which they don’t!
Look how much water is still in the bottom and you know the top couldn’t behave that way without movie magic eg. adding extra water to the top while it’s on the boil.
Seems the men who wrote and directed Woman of the Year also didn’t know what the fuck they were on about!
But let the record show Katherine Hepburn can perform the hell outta anything, including making coffee in the most sexist of circumstances.