Blue hour

Praia da Ursa, Sintra, Portugal. A blue hour seascape seen in wide angle.

The Colosseum during the blue hour

The illuminated mining lamp memorial in Moers during the blue hour

The blue hour in Zwickau, Germany

The blue hour comes from the French expression l'heure bleue, which refers to the period of twilight each morning and evening where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. The time is considered special because of the quality of the light at this time of day.

A time of innocence

The phrase is also used to refer to Paris immediately prior to World War I, which was considered to be a time of relative innocence.^{[citation needed]}

Influence in popular culture

As a result of the perceived specialness of this time, there are various restaurants, theatres and hotels called L'Heure Bleue located worldwide. There is also a women's perfume by Guerlain (1912) of the same name. The Norwegian rock band Madrugada (Spanish and Portuguese for "early morning") were also named after this time.

In English culture the term was used to describe the period of inactivity and uselessness a drinker encounters when pubs and other licensed premises have closed after the lunch-time session (typically 15:30 hrs) and will not open for the evening session until (typically 18:30 hrs) based on pub opening times in England. Scotland and Wales, now largely abolished in favour of all-day opening.

Art

• l'Heure Bleue is a concept often expressed, in his works and in his thought, by the contemporary artist Jan Fabre

Books

• The cover background of The Junior Encyclopedia of Canada, Volume 5 (S-Z)
• A series of city scenes by David Mamet collected in his Goldberg Street: Short Plays and Monologue anthology
• Blue Hour (2003), a book by Carolyn Forché
• Blue Moon (2009), the second novel in the The Immortals series by Alyson Noël
• Blue Noon (2005), the third book in Scott Westerfeld's Midnighters trilogy
• L'heure Bleue, a book by Edward Gorey
• The Blue Hour (1995), a novel by Elizabeth Evans, set in 1950's America
• The Blue Hour (1999), a novel by T. Jefferson Parker in the Merci Rayborn series
• The Blue Hour (2002), a romantic novel by Kate Thompson
• The Blueing Hours, a poetry collection by Albert DeGenova

Films

• The first portion of the 1987 episodic film, 4 aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle, by Éric Rohmer
• A 1991 film by director Marcel Gisler
• The TV calendar series Jul i Blåfjell (Christmas in Blåfjell) associates magic/other-wordly powers with the Blue Hour - blåtimen, Jul i Blåfjell (norwegian Wikipedia) (1999)
• The Blue Hour is a 2007 film starring Alyssa Milano

Music

The blue hour is also a common theme in popular music and the subject appears in various songs:

• Pete Anderson - "Blue Hour"
• Turin Brakes - "Blue Hour"
• Stephen Cummings - "Blue Hour"
• Vanessa Daou - "This Blue Hour"
• Christian Death - "The Blue Hour"
• Peter Fox - "Schwarz zu Blau" ("Black to Blue")
• Nina Gordon - "The Blue Hour"
• Françoise Hardy - "L'Heure Bleue"
• Killer Loop - "The Blue Hour"
• Ute Lemper - "L'Heure Bleue"
• John Mackey - "Hymn to a Blue Hour"
• Madrugada - "Strange Colour Blue"; both the song and the eponymous album title (which means "dawn" in Portugese and Spanish) refer to the blue hour
• Roy Orbison - "When The Blue Hour Comes"
• Oysterband - "Lost and Found"
• Radiohead - "The Gloaming"
• Andreas Vollenweider - "Chanson de l'Heure Bleue" ("Song of the Blue Hour")

Photography

• l'Heure Blue is a speciality of Czech photographer Lucie Debelkova

See also

• Civil twilight
• Midnight sun
• Polar night
• Green flash
• Golden hour
• Belt of Venus

External links

• bluehoursite.com: Everything about Blue Hour and Night Photography (news, articles, tips and calculator)
• Twilight Calculator, Golden Hour/Blue Hour table