Wait...Does This Mean...?

Just finished watching an old (1951) mystery movie on Netflix - typical innocent man framed for crime, on the run, etc. Only two people will help him, and older man and a (loose) woman. 

I like these sorts of old movies, so it was fun. And then at the end, when the crime is solved and his innocence proven and we're ready for the big Happily Ever After...

HE GIVES THE WOMAN A WRISTWATCH AND GOES OFF WITH THE OLDER MAN.

And I'm like: Wait... Wait.... Did that just happen? The woman got a practical gift ... and he's going off to live on the isolated desert ranch with the older man? What year... 1951?! I didn't know you were allowed to end a movie like that in 1951.

I'm still amused.

Scent of a Coffee

From the archives:

I was watching 1947's Born to Kill tonight and was amused to find a little bit of business about coffee toward the beginning of this film noir.

The private detective (who is the closest we're going to get to a hero in this flick) hears a delivery man comment about how the coffee in the cafe "sure smells good" and "isn't it a shame it never tastes as good as it smells." Our detective takes this comment and goes on to wax philosophical about how life is like that - better in theory than in fact.

I was somewhat surprised that their coffee didn't taste as good as it smelled.
What kind of sub-par coffee were the customers settling for?

Then I remembered that this movie was made back when people boiled the heck out of their coffee. If you let the percolator just run and run, you continually re-boiled the coffee grounds, and you ended up with a very bitter drink. Hence, the coffee smells better than it tastes.

Of course, they could also be talking about instant coffee, this being only a few years after World War II. But I'm betting it was the percolator.

With all our gourmet brands and specialty drinks, we forget how lucky we are just to have a cup of joe that tastes as good as it smells.