Coffee and Noir: CHRISTMAS IN JULY
every instance of coffee in noir: 037
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.
Christmas in July is often categorised as a screwball comedy, but unlike my singular exception for an actual screwball with a coffee scene I can’t resist, I argue Christmas in July — while not as much pure noir as It’s a Wonderful Life — has a great deal of darkness running through its veins alongside the coffee.
It reminds me of the This Had Oscar Buzz boys saying ‘Ghost is a thriller drama with Whoopi Goldberg giving a comedic performance’ — this is a noir film with a situational comedy plot.
Said plot revolves around a coffee slogan competition; sounds light enough, but it quickly twists after Jimmy’s colleagues fool him into thinking he’s won a life-changing amount of money, when not only his boss but every corporate bigwig and people pretending to be his friends are all out to get him, one way or another.
The coffee is everywhere, from the plot to the set dressing to characters casually sipping, and Jimmy’s mom’s superstition dropping money in the cup is good luck (video below).
The opening argument between Jimmy and Betty (more stereotypical names could hardly be chosen) is more mean than spirited. The middle of the scene is Jimmy ranting about his parents dying young, broke, and broken, and it ends after Betty — upset by Jimmy’s anger — falls, skins her knee, and tears her dress.
Christmas in July never drifts into outright nastiness or brutality (Sturgess is never so jaded as Capra, let alone Welles), but it’s still got plenty of sting.
After the ‘turn’ where Jimmy is fooled into believing he could have stable life, the film pushes further into noir-language lighting and tropes, from the high-contrast look to the detective door to ‘prison bar’ slatted windows.
The plot isn’t about momentarily fooling a rich man that he’s won a yacht, but a huge corporation taunting ‘the little people’ and supposed friends conning a poor man into thinking he stands a chance in the life rigged against him.
That Christmas in July’s finale walks this darkness back somewhat in a plot contortion which feels as forced as the infamous Suspicion ‘happy ending’ doesn’t make it any more horrifying when you’re in it. Multiple recent ‘reality’ or game shows play jazzy music and pretend it’s all fun and games while their goal is to trick people, with sometimes disastrous and horrifying results. Christmas in July is prescient about how discovering a web of lies can ruin not just your immediate plans, but your hope of trusting anyone again.
This crossfade sequence — from ‘watch your step’ to the returning superstition of ‘money in your cup’ to the endless line of people clocking in (five minutes early!) to work for the system grinding them down — sums up the film’s thesis clearly.
(As far as I know, Mom’s superstition comes from some reading the grounds using a coin; but I’ll say if you can see the penny while the cup is still full of liquid, the coffee is brewed too thin!)
In the end, the film proves, disproves, then affirms her superstition again, the same way you can read circumstances to fit your beliefs.
The below is the one (cantankerous, bless him!) character who rages against the machine, and here protests “I’m giving my services free to the bunch of suckers who entered this contest . . .” while surrounded with towers of the product who run his world, reminding us even if one person wins, it’s at best a pocket-change panacea dropped from the corporate gods.
What’s more noir than drinking your drugs which keep you going, liquid tonic which enables you to wake up every morning believing you could actually survive — let alone thrive — in the teeth of the grinding machinations against you?