After a horrible birthday alone followed by a lovely night out, Norah wakes up with a terrible hangover and a hunch of being a murderess.

“How about you slip into something more comfortable, like a few drinks and some Chinese food?”

– Harry

The Blue Gardenia is Lang's hard-bitten take on the gruesome Black Dahlia murder case and part of his newspaper noir trilogy together with While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, both from 1956.

They've been planning this for months, Canon City's Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility's toughest inmates. It's going to happen on December 30, and all men are ready to go.

“Nice guys.”

Fascinating about Canon City is the usage of some of the actual locations, ánd people, involved in the 1947 #prison break.

 

Also striking, unfortunately, is the unevenness of the affair. John Alton's cinematography, while wonderful, wanders between noir and stuck camera shutter. And that voice-over… well, lets not mention that at all.

“Yes, I'm afraid of death… but for a humble secret agent that's a fact of life, like whisky. And I've drunk that all my life.”

– Lemmy Caution

Science fiction, of course, doesn't have to be driven by grandes effects, by superstar names and monumental backdrops. It can be cool, dry, colourless even. The hero, in trenchcoat and fedora, traverses a lightless city. There are few others at this time of night. The familiar landmarks of the City of Light become the voice of 𝛼-60, an artificial intelligence that presides over Alphaville.

𝛼-60: “Do you know what illuminates the night?”

Lemmy Caution: “Poetry.”

– 𝛼-60 playing the imitation game with Lemmy Caution

Based on a poem by Paul Éluard, #Godard's Alphaville bears similarities with Jean #Cocteau's Orphée (1950), transported to a mirror world of sorts. It also foreshadows not only our time, but also M. Hulot's, whose #Tativille could be the simulacra of 𝛼-60's simulated, dehumanised world.

In a strange other #England – in the village of Chillingbourne to be precise – a train pulls into the station. On board are several people on their way to #Canterbury.

“You're not dreaming.”

– Thomas Colpeper, JP

When Alison disembarks, believing she arrived at the pilgrim's town, a stranger pours #glue in her hair. She's the eleventh, the policeman said. It's the glue man, the townsfolk know. Like the pilgrims of #Chaucer's poem, Alison and her fellow stranded travellers journey towards the closure of this mystifying case.