Coffee and Noir: FALLEN ANGEL
every instance of coffee in noir: 050
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.
A great deal of the fateful meetings and crucial decisions which happen in 1945’s Fallen Angel happen in Pop's Eats.
The film literally begins and ends with ordering, drinking, and paying for coffee.
Eric: Cup of coffee, please.
Pop: It's after 10, we're closed up.
Eric: And a hamburger, well-done, with onions, mustard, relish . . .
Pop: What else you want on that hamburger, the whole state of California?
Eric: What's the population?
Pop: I'll fix you something.
So Pop fixes the order, but Stella comes in and wolfs down the burger before Eric gets a chance. He finishes his coffee and calls it “the best burger I never ate.”
Naturally, that piece of meat is about to put him in a world of hurt.
It’s the kinda diner where a man holds a gun in one hand and a steaming cuppa joe in the other.
In between, bone white mugs are ubiquitous as hard hearts.
I wasn’t so much a fan of the way the plot plays it safe —some comes down to fear of the Hays Code, and some comes down to letting elements stand in for style.
Diners and coffee cups and cigarettes and murder do not a noir make, but they certainly do a noir well adorn, and Fallen Angel revolves around them as much as Eric and Stella do.