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.
Johnny Guitar is a Western Noir, genre elements bleeding through as though director Nicholas Ray, noir master, can’t help himself.
I already talked about the titular Johnny’s iconic character introduction on Shot Zero, so this is just about what he lauds as the only two things a man really needs: a smoke and a cup of coffee.
(It must be noted he’s making intense, telling eye contact with Vienna here and soon after, very much insinuating there’s a third thing . . . but he doesn’t need or want her at all, not one little bit. Neither we nor she believe him.)
Johnny enters the scene hand- first, the camera tilting up past his other hand holding a delicate china cup before reaching his face. Johnny then sets the shot glass down and asks for a cigarette, keeping his hands busy with small items because you see he’s a quickdraw, a notorious gunslinger — both his hands being occupied is a symbol to the room that he’s no threat.
Johnny follows up his visual cues with words, using the cigarette as a way to connect to members on both ‘sides’, then delivering a speech about the concept of coffee and a smoke to connect to something they ALL want: peace.
A cup of coffee, a smoke, a beautiful woman, a peaceful resolution to conflict. What more could we want?
Though in noir, we’re lucky to get two of the four . . . and we know full well even those won’t last us forever.