Flesh + blood

Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window is to Blue Hotel what Sunset Boulevard was to Shirker. Shirker was narrated by a dead man; Blue Hotel is about a portrait that comes alive.

Girish Shambu writes about the 1944 noir classic here:

"Returning to the portrait of the woman in the window later in the evening, now augmented by a few drinks, [Edward G Robinson as Wanley] finds a second image alongside the picture: the ghostly reflection of Alice (Joan Bennett) standing next to him. Lang renders this shot in such a moody, hallucinatory manner that it is easy to believe that this is less a woman of flesh and blood than an apparition. Wanley himself does an incredulous double take, signaling that even he believes it’s a dream."

Ben Sachs discusses how its protagonist's fateful romanticism nudges the film's internal reality:

"[Wanley's] one refuge is his imagination, which the film expresses, eloquently, through his boyish fascination with that silly portrait. He suggests one of the archetypal moviegoers—the single urban professional who showed up for every new pulpy entertainment because that’s what you did when you lived alone in a city. How appropriate that The Woman in the Window—which superficially resembles dozens, if not hundreds of other low-budget noirs in its stark look—should be his nightmare."