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.
It’s a Wonderful Life is a noir, and one of my favourite film magazines agrees with me, so that’s that!
Now, for the coffee part.
For people who know the story through it’s multiple TV episode homages, it may be a surprise on a first watch to see the crucial turning point of George Bailey’s ‘alternate timeline’ doesn’t come until an hour forty five minutes, after his attempt at suicide is stalled by a angel Clarence Oddbody.
After clambering out of the freezing river, Clarence gives George — you guessed it — coffee to warm and sober him up before seeing his world as if “you’ve never been born. you don’t exist.”
All scene, the tin coffeepot keeps warm on the metal stove.
What better way to kick off a life-transforming, affirming, potentially mind-bending surrealist adventure which would change cinema forever, than a cup of coffee?