Coffee and Noir: THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY
every instance of coffee in noir: 048
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.
The Last Stop in Yuma County gets its Classic Cafe Setup Shot early, Charlotte (Jocelin Donahue) and The Knife Salesman (Jim Cummings) facing each other across a booth, window in the background; a noirish setup as seen in Cigarettes & Coffee or Thief or a dozen more.
Because coffee ends up being a huge part of several small plot points, I won’t go as much into every beat, but the noir-y stylised shots are so damn fun.
It’s got Western, it’s got noir, it’s got coffee, it’s got flair. I absolutely frothed this film; it’s up on Kanopy now, and apparently rentable other places, too.
Last but not least, I look at what makes some of the hot (non-coffee) shots work over on Shot Zero.
