Coffee and Noir: WOMAN ON THE RUN
every instance of coffee in noir: 045
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 first instance of coffee is actually a lack thereof — a detective feeling, then smelling, the coffeepot, trying to ascertain if Eleanor’s (Ann Sheridan) husband has been in the apartment recently.
Yes it’s a kettle, and nobody in the scene says the words ‘tea’ or ‘coffee,’ but after he touches and finds it cold he sniffs, which shows us it’s coffee — you wouldn’t be able to tell if boiled water for tea were stale or fresh.
The scene moving into the kitchen is also notable for how it allows the three men to surround and crowd the woman into the smallest place in the house, and continue to touch her things and impose on her whether she wants it or no; look how the framing puts Eleanor’s back to the wall, and puts them on three planes behind, even with, and in front of her.
Dan tries to get closer to Eleanor by offering her sustenance.
“What’d you have have breakfast, coffee and a cigarette?”
“Coffee.”
So they go to a cafe, where both get a coffee . . . we see him drink it, but she still only smokes a cigarette.
Again we’re being shown not told, but we know whe she’s not drinking: caffeine would rattle her already-shot nerves.
This is also the scene where we get a crucial reveal — but only to the audience!
I won’t spoil it here, but Woman on the Run is worth the watch.
Perfect picture, perfect uses of coffee.