Coffee and Noir: BOUND
every instance of coffee in noir: 054
You can learn a lot about a character by how they take 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.
As I wrote about Bound in a sentence I’m still — perhaps inordinately — proud of:
Violet brings Corky steaming black coffee in less time than it takes Walter Neff to ask Phyllis Dietrichson to chat insurance, which means Violet and Corky are fucking in a oner around the time Phyllis tells Walter what the speed limit is in this town.
Bound uses coffee as seduction; or perhaps more accurately, as a preamble and pretext. You need an excuse to invite yourself into your hot neighbour’s place, touch her hands, chat her up, stand real close?
Need something to leave at her place that she’ll need to return?
Bring her a cup of coffee.
And the way they shoot said coffee, in shimmering closeup, while Corky gives it the kind of appraisal you’d usually give a sexy woman?
That’s art.
That’s noir.