The Man From London
Encyclopedia
The Man from London is a 2007 film by Hungarian director Béla Tarr
. It is an adaptation by Tarr and his collaborator-friend László Krasznahorkai
of the 1934 French language
novel L'Homme de Londres by prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon
. The film was co-directed by editor Ágnes Hranitzky, and features an international ensemble cast including Czech actor Miroslav Krobot
, Tilda Swinton
, and Hungarian actors János Derzsi and István Lénárt. The plot follows Maloin, a nondescript railway worker who recovers a briefcase containing a significant amount of money from the scene of a murder to which he is the only witness. Wracked by guilt and fear of being discovered, Maloin sinks into despondence and frustration, which leads to acrimony in his household. Meanwhile, an English police detective investigates the disappearance of the money and the unscrupulous characters connected to the crime.
The French, German and Hungarian co-production of the film was fraught with difficulty and obstacles. The first of these was the suicide in February 2005, days before shooting was due to begin, of the film's French producer, Humbert Balsan
. As the original financing of the film collapsed, the remaining producers managed to secure stop-gap funding which allowed them to shoot nine days of footage on the expensive Corsica
n sets, until they were shut down through legal action by the local subcontractor. After many expressions of support from European film organisations, production companies and government bodies, a new co-production contract was signed in July 2005 with a revised budget and shooting schedule. It then emerged that all rights to the film had been ceded to a French bank under the original production agreement, and only after further changes in the film's backers was a deal struck with the bank to allow shooting to resume in March 2006, over a year later than had been originally envisaged.
The Man from London was the first of Tarr's films to premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival
, but despite being highly anticipated, it won no prize. The French distributor blamed this on poor dubbing and a late showing, though the press were put off by the film's extended shots
and leaden pace. After being re-dubbed, it was shown on the international film festival
circuit. The critical reception to the film was divided; though reviewers spoke in glowing terms of the formidable cinematography and meticulous composition, they denounced the film's lack of compelling plot or characters and the tedium and alienation of the viewing experience. Though the director's preceding films, Sátántangó
(1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies
(2000), had been acclaimed as masterpieces, critics concurred that The Man from London fell short. Variety reviewer Derek Elley commented that the film was unlikely to reconcile the division between viewers of Tarr's films who find the director to be "either a visionary genius or a crashing bore".
, Maloin (Miroslav Krobot
), who lives in a decrepit apartment in a port town with his highly-strung wife Camélia (Tilda Swinton
) and his daughter Henriette (Erika Bók). One night while in his viewing tower at the port's rail terminus, Maloin witnesses a fight on the dockside. One of the shady combatants is knocked into the water along with the briefcase he carries; when the other flees the dark quayside, Maloin makes a clandestine descent from the tower and retrieves the briefcase, which he finds full of sodden English banknotes. Maloin conceals the money and tells no-one of what he has seen. The next morning, he visits a tavern where he plays chess with the barkeep (Gyula Pauer). On his way home, he stops by the butcher's where his daughter works, and finds to his indignance that they have her washing the floor. Later, from the window of his apartment, he notices Brown (János Derzsi) watching him from below. At dinner, Maloin is increasingly irascible, addressing Henriette brusquely and arguing with Camélia. Meanwhile Brown searches the water at the dock's edge without success before noticing the watchtower overlooking the quayside, and Maloin within.
Later at the tavern, a police inspector from London named Morrison (István Lénárt) discusses with Brown the matter of the stolen money. Morrison claims to be working on behalf of a theatre owner named Mitchell, a theatre owner from whose office safe the £55,000 was stolen. Morrison proposes that Brown, being intimately familiar with Mitchell's office, is the only man he knows that was capable of making away with the money without raising alarm. Morrison indicates that Mitchell cares only that the money is returned swiftly, and is even prepared to offer a two night's theatre takings in exchange. When Morrison mentions having visited Brown's wife and asks what he should tell Mitchell, Brown leaves the room under a pretense and slips out a side door. Nearby playing chess with the barkeep, Maloin has overheard the conversation.
Maloin calls to the butcher's and drags Henriette from the store against her will and over the protestations of the butcher's wife (Kati Lázár). He brings her to the tavern for a drink, where he overhears the barkeep telling another patron the story of Brown's meeting with the inspector, revealing that Morrison had called the local police when Brown absconded. Though Henriette refuses her drink, Maloin buys her an expensive mink stole
. They return home to the consternation of Camélia, who cannot comprehend why Maloin has ruined Henriette's chances of a job and spent what little savings the family had on the extravagant stole. During Maloin's shift the next night he is visited by Morrison, who questions him as to the previous night's events as the body of the drowned man is retrieved from the quayside below.
The next day at the tavern, Morrison meets Brown's wife (Agi Szirtes), and tells her that Brown is under suspicion for the theft and for the murder at the quayside. He asks for her help in finding him and repeats to her Mitchell's offer to Brown, but she remains silent. At home, Henriette tells Maloin she found a man in their hut at the seaside, and in fear locked the door and ran home. An agitated Maloin tells her not to tell anyone, and leaves for the hut. He unlocks the door, and receiving no response to his calling Brown's name, steps inside, closing the door behind. Minutes later he re-emerges, breathing heavily. After pausing to compose himself, he locks the door and leaves. In the next scene, Maloin presents the briefcase to Morrison in the tavern, and asks him to arrest him, confessing to having killed Brown an hour ago. Morrison leaves with Maloin for the hut, dismissing the frenzied inquiries of Brown's wife about her husband and handing the briefcase to the barkeep on the way out. Brown's wife follows the men to the hut, and emerges weeping with Brown moments later. Back at the tavern, Morrison prepares two envelopes with a small portion of the recovered money in each. One he leaves with the grieving widow to whom he apologises and wishes well, while the other he gives to Maloin, telling him that his case was one of self-defence. As he is preparing to leave, Morrison advises Maloin to go home and forget the whole affair. The camera focuses on the expressionless face of Brown's wife momentarily before fading to white.
, as an ordinary man, from moral principle, an alienation linked, counterintuitively, to the absence of desire in his daily grind.
had been collaborators since making the acclaimed epic Sátántangó
in 1985. With The Man from London, they sought to adapt the 1934 French language
novel L'Homme de Londres by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon
. The novel had been twice adapted for film previously; as The London Man by Henri Decoin
in 1943, and as Temptation Harbour
by Lance Comfort
in 1947 with William Hartnell
, Robert Newton
, and Simone Simon
in the lead roles. The Man from London was something of a departure from the social realism
of the collaborators' preceding films, as the characters exemplify no social classes and the film focuses on their internal and interrelational dynamics rather than their environment. Tarr explained that he had been drawn to adapt the novel because "it deals with the eternal and the everyday at one and the same time. It deals with the cosmic and the realistic, the divine and the human, and to my mind, contains the totality of nature and man, just as it contains their pettiness." It was the first of the director's films not to feature the Hungarian language or an Eastern European setting. The ensemble cast
of the film included Czech Miroslav Krobot
, Briton Tilda Swinton
, and the Hungarians János Derzsi and István Lénárt. Tarr shared directorial credit with Ágnes Hranitzky – the film's editor and his long-time collaborator.
committed suicide. Tarr reported receiving word of his producer's death two days before shooting was scheduled to begin in Bastia
, Corsica. Balsan's death led to significant financial difficulties for the production. The film had been established as a co-production with French, German and Hungarian financing. Tarr's Budapest-based production company T. T. Filmműhely were to provide the Hungarian funding for the project, while Balsan had secured the French and German financing for the film by warranting
a loan from the French bank Coficiné. Upon learning of his death, the bank withdrew its support for the production, which was then postponed.
After securing additional financing from Eurimages
and ARTE
, Tarr used these and the Hungarian funds to undertake nine days of shooting on sets he had built at a cost of €
2 million. The French funding was cross-financed for the shoot by T. T. Filmműhely. As funds were frozen however, the Corsican subcontractor Tanit Films (controlled by the film's then-executive producer Jean-Patrick Costantini), terminated their contract with Balsan and through legal action compelled the production to dismantle the sets and leave the shooting location. At that point, Ognon Pictures shut the production down and disassociated themselves from the film, and Tarr withdrew to Hungary to regroup.
Expressions of sympathy and solidarity from the European film community manifested in renewed assurances of continued support from the production's German partners, ARTE, and the French National Film Centre (whose support was conditional on the film having 51% of its dialogue in French). New French financing was secured from production company Mezzanine Film, and in Hungary, the Hungarian Motion Picture Foundation (MMKA) and the Minister of Culture pledged to back the production if a guarantee could be made that the film would be finished safely. A compromise filming schedule was negotiated whereby a quarter of the shoot would take place in Eastern Europe rather than Corsica and fewer shooting days would be allotted. This allowed the original €5 million budget to be reduced by €700,000 to the amount available. With the funding promises secured and a revised shooting schedule, the film's producers forged a new co-production contract in July 2005.
While the production's lawyers worked to clarify its legal standing in the Summer of 2005, it emerged that Humbert Balsan's deeply indebted production company Ognon Pictures had pledged all rights to the production to Coficiné in exchange for loans. With production in legal stasis and faced with a lengthy court battle to recover the rights, the producers agreed to a settlement with Ognon's bankruptcy
officer. In the meantime, the French partners Mezzanine Film declared their uncomfortableness with the scale of the production, and after mutual agreement with the producers, left the project on September 5, 2005. After meeting with the producers and their new French partner, Paul Saadoun of 13 Production, Coficiné consented to completing the film. On February 6, 2006, Tarr and producer Gábor Téni issued a press release which documented at length the developments with the troubled production to that date, and expressed their hope and intent to persevere in completing the film. Tarr duly restarted shooting in March 2006, after a year of inactivity. The filmmakers dedicated The Man from London to their late colleague Humbert Balsan.
The Man from London premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival
, Tarr's first film to do so. Although its showing was highly anticipated, the slow pace and prolonged shots of the film "had the press fleeing like panicked slaughterhouse cattle" as The New York Times put it, and it won no prize. This failure was attributed by the film's French distributor Shellac to its late showing and the poor quality of the dubbing
. A proposal for the film to open the Hungarian Film Week out of competition had previously been rejected by the festival's board. Following its Cannes appearance, the film was screened at the film festivals of Toronto
, Melbourne
, Edinburgh
, Split
, Vancouver
and New York
. It proved controversial in New York, where elements of the audience reacted favourably when the film appeared to end prematurely due to a technical fault; others greeted the actual conclusion with fervent applause and calls of bravo.
Global sales rights to the film were bought by Fortissimo Films
, and it was re-dubbed in French and English. The new version had its North American premiere at the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City in September 2008. In the United Kingdom, distributor Artificial Eye
released the film theatrically in December 2008, 18 months following its Cannes premiere. They later released a DVD box set of Tarr's films which collected The Man from London with Damnation (1988) and Werckmeister Harmonies
(2000). In the United States the film was given a limited release
in May 2009 by IFC Films
, who later made it available through video-on-demand.
s Derek Elley rated the film on a par with his Damnation (1988) but as inferior to the masterpieces Sátántangó
(1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), and remarked that it was improbable that The Man From London would put an end to the polarization of Tarr's audiences into those who hail him as a director of "visionary genius" and those for whom he is a "crashing bore". Martin Tsai of The New York Sun allowed that Tarr "makes it easy for viewers to get lost in his beautifully bleak world and lose track of time" but complained that in comparison with its predecessors, the film's central theme of guilt seemed insubstantial and the film itself felt "slight and incomplete".
The New York Times
reviewer Nathan Lee described The Man from London as "bloated, formalist art", and an "outrageously stylized, conceptually demanding film" that dehumanizes and alienates its audience. In The Hollywood Reporter
, Kirk Honeycutt complimented the intricacy of the cinematography and the monochrome photography, but judged the film to be "tedious", "repetitive" and "nearly unwatchable". In a review of Cannes' offerings for Time Out, Dave Calhoun too drew attention to the meticulous cinematography and signature shot length's of Tarr's "austere and mesmeric" film, and declared Swinton's dubbing into Hungarian one of the festival's strangest instances of cultural displacement. Reporting from Cannes, The Guardians Peter Bradshaw
described the film as "bizarre and lugubrious, but mesmeric", and praised the muted performance of Agi Szirtes in the role of Brown's wife as "strangely compelling". Reviewing the film following its theatrical release, he found the dubbed dialogue affected and odd, the score doom-laden, the occasional humour mordant, and the cinematography mesmerising, remarking that net effect was "unsettling, sometimes absurd, sometimes stunning". Ed Gonzales of The Village Voice
concluded that the film "stands as an example of style for the sake of pure and intense but dispassionate style".
Béla Tarr
-Life:Tarr was born in Pécs, but grew up in Budapest. Both of his parents were close to theatre and film: his father was a scenery designer, while his mother has been working as a prompter at a theater for more than 50 years now...
. It is an adaptation by Tarr and his collaborator-friend László Krasznahorkai
László Krasznahorkai
László Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian writer. He completed his university studies in Hungary, and has supported himself as an independent author since then...
of the 1934 French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
novel L'Homme de Londres by prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon
Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...
. The film was co-directed by editor Ágnes Hranitzky, and features an international ensemble cast including Czech actor Miroslav Krobot
Miroslav Krobot
Miroslav Krobot is a Czech theatre director and film actor. He starred in the film The Man from London, which was entered into the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* Wrong Side Up...
, Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
, and Hungarian actors János Derzsi and István Lénárt. The plot follows Maloin, a nondescript railway worker who recovers a briefcase containing a significant amount of money from the scene of a murder to which he is the only witness. Wracked by guilt and fear of being discovered, Maloin sinks into despondence and frustration, which leads to acrimony in his household. Meanwhile, an English police detective investigates the disappearance of the money and the unscrupulous characters connected to the crime.
The French, German and Hungarian co-production of the film was fraught with difficulty and obstacles. The first of these was the suicide in February 2005, days before shooting was due to begin, of the film's French producer, Humbert Balsan
Humbert Balsan
Humbert Balsan, born Humbert Jean René Balsan was a French film producer and chairman of the European Film Academy. He was renowned for securing financing and distribution for diverse and often challenging films.In February 2005, Balsan was found dead in the offices of his production company,...
. As the original financing of the film collapsed, the remaining producers managed to secure stop-gap funding which allowed them to shoot nine days of footage on the expensive Corsica
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....
n sets, until they were shut down through legal action by the local subcontractor. After many expressions of support from European film organisations, production companies and government bodies, a new co-production contract was signed in July 2005 with a revised budget and shooting schedule. It then emerged that all rights to the film had been ceded to a French bank under the original production agreement, and only after further changes in the film's backers was a deal struck with the bank to allow shooting to resume in March 2006, over a year later than had been originally envisaged.
The Man from London was the first of Tarr's films to premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
, but despite being highly anticipated, it won no prize. The French distributor blamed this on poor dubbing and a late showing, though the press were put off by the film's extended shots
Long take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
and leaden pace. After being re-dubbed, it was shown on the international film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
circuit. The critical reception to the film was divided; though reviewers spoke in glowing terms of the formidable cinematography and meticulous composition, they denounced the film's lack of compelling plot or characters and the tedium and alienation of the viewing experience. Though the director's preceding films, Sátántangó
Satantango
Sátántangó is a film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white, completed in 1994, it runs 7 hours and 12 minutes. It is based on the novel Sátántangó by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who has been providing Tarr with stories since his 1988 film Kárhozat...
(1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies
Werckmeister Harmonies
Werckmeister Harmonies is a 2000 Hungarian film directed by Béla Tarr, based on the novel The Melancholy of Resistance , by László Krasznahorkai...
(2000), had been acclaimed as masterpieces, critics concurred that The Man from London fell short. Variety reviewer Derek Elley commented that the film was unlikely to reconcile the division between viewers of Tarr's films who find the director to be "either a visionary genius or a crashing bore".
Plot
The film concerns a middle-aged railway pointsmanSignalman (rail)
A signalman or signaller is an employee of a railway transport network who operates the points and signals from a signal box in order to control the movement of trains.- History :...
, Maloin (Miroslav Krobot
Miroslav Krobot
Miroslav Krobot is a Czech theatre director and film actor. He starred in the film The Man from London, which was entered into the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* Wrong Side Up...
), who lives in a decrepit apartment in a port town with his highly-strung wife Camélia (Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
) and his daughter Henriette (Erika Bók). One night while in his viewing tower at the port's rail terminus, Maloin witnesses a fight on the dockside. One of the shady combatants is knocked into the water along with the briefcase he carries; when the other flees the dark quayside, Maloin makes a clandestine descent from the tower and retrieves the briefcase, which he finds full of sodden English banknotes. Maloin conceals the money and tells no-one of what he has seen. The next morning, he visits a tavern where he plays chess with the barkeep (Gyula Pauer). On his way home, he stops by the butcher's where his daughter works, and finds to his indignance that they have her washing the floor. Later, from the window of his apartment, he notices Brown (János Derzsi) watching him from below. At dinner, Maloin is increasingly irascible, addressing Henriette brusquely and arguing with Camélia. Meanwhile Brown searches the water at the dock's edge without success before noticing the watchtower overlooking the quayside, and Maloin within.
Later at the tavern, a police inspector from London named Morrison (István Lénárt) discusses with Brown the matter of the stolen money. Morrison claims to be working on behalf of a theatre owner named Mitchell, a theatre owner from whose office safe the £55,000 was stolen. Morrison proposes that Brown, being intimately familiar with Mitchell's office, is the only man he knows that was capable of making away with the money without raising alarm. Morrison indicates that Mitchell cares only that the money is returned swiftly, and is even prepared to offer a two night's theatre takings in exchange. When Morrison mentions having visited Brown's wife and asks what he should tell Mitchell, Brown leaves the room under a pretense and slips out a side door. Nearby playing chess with the barkeep, Maloin has overheard the conversation.
Maloin calls to the butcher's and drags Henriette from the store against her will and over the protestations of the butcher's wife (Kati Lázár). He brings her to the tavern for a drink, where he overhears the barkeep telling another patron the story of Brown's meeting with the inspector, revealing that Morrison had called the local police when Brown absconded. Though Henriette refuses her drink, Maloin buys her an expensive mink stole
Stole (shawl)
A stole is a lady's shawl, especially a formal shawl of expensive fabric used around the shoulders over a party dress or ballgown.A stole is typically narrower than a shawl, and of simpler construction than a cape; being a length of a quality material, wrapped and carried about the shoulders or arms...
. They return home to the consternation of Camélia, who cannot comprehend why Maloin has ruined Henriette's chances of a job and spent what little savings the family had on the extravagant stole. During Maloin's shift the next night he is visited by Morrison, who questions him as to the previous night's events as the body of the drowned man is retrieved from the quayside below.
The next day at the tavern, Morrison meets Brown's wife (Agi Szirtes), and tells her that Brown is under suspicion for the theft and for the murder at the quayside. He asks for her help in finding him and repeats to her Mitchell's offer to Brown, but she remains silent. At home, Henriette tells Maloin she found a man in their hut at the seaside, and in fear locked the door and ran home. An agitated Maloin tells her not to tell anyone, and leaves for the hut. He unlocks the door, and receiving no response to his calling Brown's name, steps inside, closing the door behind. Minutes later he re-emerges, breathing heavily. After pausing to compose himself, he locks the door and leaves. In the next scene, Maloin presents the briefcase to Morrison in the tavern, and asks him to arrest him, confessing to having killed Brown an hour ago. Morrison leaves with Maloin for the hut, dismissing the frenzied inquiries of Brown's wife about her husband and handing the briefcase to the barkeep on the way out. Brown's wife follows the men to the hut, and emerges weeping with Brown moments later. Back at the tavern, Morrison prepares two envelopes with a small portion of the recovered money in each. One he leaves with the grieving widow to whom he apologises and wishes well, while the other he gives to Maloin, telling him that his case was one of self-defence. As he is preparing to leave, Morrison advises Maloin to go home and forget the whole affair. The camera focuses on the expressionless face of Brown's wife momentarily before fading to white.
Analysis
According to critic Martha P. Nochimson, the film is an exploration of the place of anonymous breakdowns of social order in personal life. For the most part, questions of justice operate in the background of The Man From London, which foregrounds the perceptions and point of view of an accidental witness to the murder, who, like the viewer, has no connection with anyone involved. The film principally concerns the texture of the world of the protagonist Maloin as he experiences it first hand: fog, light, shadow, skin, walls, floors, windows, sounds. These are much closer to Maloin than any broken laws involving strangers as in the killing at the dock. As distinct from the trope of crime functioning as a break from the boredom of the mundane for the Hitchcockian ordinary man "excitingly" caught up in it, the interjection of crime in the lives of the characters of The Man from London is a phantom occurrence for those burrowed into the center of the mundane details of their lives. In other words, Tarr's film suggests the possibility that it is only on an abstract plane that murder committed by and on strangers causes a stir and demands an investigation. In this context, it is fitting that the investigation must be undertaken by a stranger, the man from London, since abstraction entails distancing from an enveloping context. Only the appearance of the man from London, Brown, impels Maloin to struggle with his de facto alienationAlienation
Alienation may refer to:*Alienation , the legal transfer of title of ownership to another party*"Alienation", the medical term for splitting apart of the faculties of the mind...
, as an ordinary man, from moral principle, an alienation linked, counterintuitively, to the absence of desire in his daily grind.
Background
Director Béla Tarr and novelist-screenwriter László KrasznahorkaiLászló Krasznahorkai
László Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian writer. He completed his university studies in Hungary, and has supported himself as an independent author since then...
had been collaborators since making the acclaimed epic Sátántangó
Satantango
Sátántangó is a film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white, completed in 1994, it runs 7 hours and 12 minutes. It is based on the novel Sátántangó by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who has been providing Tarr with stories since his 1988 film Kárhozat...
in 1985. With The Man from London, they sought to adapt the 1934 French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
novel L'Homme de Londres by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon
Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...
. The novel had been twice adapted for film previously; as The London Man by Henri Decoin
Henri Decoin
Henri Decoin was a French film director and screenwriter. He directed 50 films between 1933 and 1964. He was also a swimmer who competed for France in the men's 400 metre freestyle event at the 1908 Summer Olympics and the water polo tournament at the 1912 Summer Olympics.-Selected filmography:*...
in 1943, and as Temptation Harbour
Temptation Harbour
Temptation Harbour is a British black and white crime/drama film directed by Lance Comfort, released in 1947 based on the novel Newhaven-Dieppe by Georges Simenon. The film was made at Welwyn Film Studios.-Synopsis:...
by Lance Comfort
Lance Comfort
Lance Comfort was an English film director and producer born in Harrow, London.With a career spanning over 25 years he became one of the most prolific film directors in Britain though never gained critical attention and remained on the fringes of the film industry creating mostly B movies.Comfort...
in 1947 with William Hartnell
William Hartnell
William Henry Hartnell was an English actor. During 1963-66, he was the first actor to play the Doctor in the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.-Early life:...
, Robert Newton
Robert Newton
Robert Newton was an English stage and film actor. Along with Errol Flynn, Newton was one of the most popular actors among the male juvenile audience of the 1940s and early 1950s, especially with British boys...
, and Simone Simon
Simone Simon
Simone Thérèse Fernande Simon was a French film actress who began her film career in 1931.-Early life:Born in Béthune, Pas-de-Calais France, she was the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French engineer, airplane pilot in World War II, who died in a concentration camp, and Erma Maria...
in the lead roles. The Man from London was something of a departure from the social realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
of the collaborators' preceding films, as the characters exemplify no social classes and the film focuses on their internal and interrelational dynamics rather than their environment. Tarr explained that he had been drawn to adapt the novel because "it deals with the eternal and the everyday at one and the same time. It deals with the cosmic and the realistic, the divine and the human, and to my mind, contains the totality of nature and man, just as it contains their pettiness." It was the first of the director's films not to feature the Hungarian language or an Eastern European setting. The ensemble cast
Ensemble cast
An ensemble cast is made up of cast members in which the principal actors and performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a dramatic production. This kind of casting became more popular in television series because it allows flexibility for writers to focus on...
of the film included Czech Miroslav Krobot
Miroslav Krobot
Miroslav Krobot is a Czech theatre director and film actor. He starred in the film The Man from London, which was entered into the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* Wrong Side Up...
, Briton Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
, and the Hungarians János Derzsi and István Lénárt. Tarr shared directorial credit with Ágnes Hranitzky – the film's editor and his long-time collaborator.
Production history
The development of the film was problematic, with threats to shut down the production, lack of financing, and ultimately a return to work. The project first faltered in February 2005, when the film's producer Humbert BalsanHumbert Balsan
Humbert Balsan, born Humbert Jean René Balsan was a French film producer and chairman of the European Film Academy. He was renowned for securing financing and distribution for diverse and often challenging films.In February 2005, Balsan was found dead in the offices of his production company,...
committed suicide. Tarr reported receiving word of his producer's death two days before shooting was scheduled to begin in Bastia
Bastia
Bastia is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France located in the northeast of the island of Corsica at the base of Cap Corse. It is also the second-largest city in Corsica after Ajaccio and the capital of the department....
, Corsica. Balsan's death led to significant financial difficulties for the production. The film had been established as a co-production with French, German and Hungarian financing. Tarr's Budapest-based production company T. T. Filmműhely were to provide the Hungarian funding for the project, while Balsan had secured the French and German financing for the film by warranting
Warrant (finance)
In finance, a warrant is a security that entitles the holder to buy the underlying stock of the issuing company at a fixed exercise price until the expiry date....
a loan from the French bank Coficiné. Upon learning of his death, the bank withdrew its support for the production, which was then postponed.
After securing additional financing from Eurimages
Eurimages
Eurimages is the Council of Europe fund for the co-production, distribution, exhibition and digitisation of European cinematographic works. It aims to promote the European film industry by encouraging the production and distribution of films and fostering co-operation between professionals....
and ARTE
Arte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
, Tarr used these and the Hungarian funds to undertake nine days of shooting on sets he had built at a cost of €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
2 million. The French funding was cross-financed for the shoot by T. T. Filmműhely. As funds were frozen however, the Corsican subcontractor Tanit Films (controlled by the film's then-executive producer Jean-Patrick Costantini), terminated their contract with Balsan and through legal action compelled the production to dismantle the sets and leave the shooting location. At that point, Ognon Pictures shut the production down and disassociated themselves from the film, and Tarr withdrew to Hungary to regroup.
Expressions of sympathy and solidarity from the European film community manifested in renewed assurances of continued support from the production's German partners, ARTE, and the French National Film Centre (whose support was conditional on the film having 51% of its dialogue in French). New French financing was secured from production company Mezzanine Film, and in Hungary, the Hungarian Motion Picture Foundation (MMKA) and the Minister of Culture pledged to back the production if a guarantee could be made that the film would be finished safely. A compromise filming schedule was negotiated whereby a quarter of the shoot would take place in Eastern Europe rather than Corsica and fewer shooting days would be allotted. This allowed the original €5 million budget to be reduced by €700,000 to the amount available. With the funding promises secured and a revised shooting schedule, the film's producers forged a new co-production contract in July 2005.
While the production's lawyers worked to clarify its legal standing in the Summer of 2005, it emerged that Humbert Balsan's deeply indebted production company Ognon Pictures had pledged all rights to the production to Coficiné in exchange for loans. With production in legal stasis and faced with a lengthy court battle to recover the rights, the producers agreed to a settlement with Ognon's bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
officer. In the meantime, the French partners Mezzanine Film declared their uncomfortableness with the scale of the production, and after mutual agreement with the producers, left the project on September 5, 2005. After meeting with the producers and their new French partner, Paul Saadoun of 13 Production, Coficiné consented to completing the film. On February 6, 2006, Tarr and producer Gábor Téni issued a press release which documented at length the developments with the troubled production to that date, and expressed their hope and intent to persevere in completing the film. Tarr duly restarted shooting in March 2006, after a year of inactivity. The filmmakers dedicated The Man from London to their late colleague Humbert Balsan.
Release
2007 Cannes Film Festival
The 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the sixtieth, ran from 16 to 27 May 2007. Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights opened the festival, and Denys Arcand's The Age of Ignorance closed...
, Tarr's first film to do so. Although its showing was highly anticipated, the slow pace and prolonged shots of the film "had the press fleeing like panicked slaughterhouse cattle" as The New York Times put it, and it won no prize. This failure was attributed by the film's French distributor Shellac to its late showing and the poor quality of the dubbing
Dubbing (filmmaking)
Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be...
. A proposal for the film to open the Hungarian Film Week out of competition had previously been rejected by the festival's board. Following its Cannes appearance, the film was screened at the film festivals of Toronto
2007 Toronto International Film Festival
The 2007 Toronto International Film Festival was a 32nd annual film festival held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It ran from September 6, 2007 to September 15, 2007. The lineup consisted of 349 films from 55 countries, selected from 4156 submissions...
, Melbourne
Melbourne International Film Festival
The Melbourne International Film Festival is an acclaimed annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1951, making it one of the oldest in the World....
, Edinburgh
Edinburgh International Film Festival
The Edinburgh International Film Festival is an annual fortnight of cinema screenings and related events taking place each June. Established in 1947, it is the world's oldest continually running film festival...
, Split
Split Film Festival
Split Film Festival or Split International Festival of New Film, is one of the oldest film and video festivals in Croatia that showcases new, creative, personal, radical works of all styles, themes, genres and lengths, whether film, or new media, preferably from outside the mainstream...
, Vancouver
Vancouver Film Festival
The Canadian city of Vancouver hosts three film festivals:* The Vancouver International Film Festival* The Vancouver Asian Film Festival* The Vancouver Queer Film Festival...
and New York
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
. It proved controversial in New York, where elements of the audience reacted favourably when the film appeared to end prematurely due to a technical fault; others greeted the actual conclusion with fervent applause and calls of bravo.
Global sales rights to the film were bought by Fortissimo Films
Fortissimo Films
Fortissimo Films is a multi-national film production, sales and distribution company. The company has been behind such East Asian films as Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love, the Thai films Tears of the Black Tiger and Last Life in the Universe, as well as such independent films as Pleasure...
, and it was re-dubbed in French and English. The new version had its North American premiere at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York City in September 2008. In the United Kingdom, distributor Artificial Eye
Artificial eye
Artificial eye may refer to:* Visual prosthesis, functioning implant designed to restore sight* Ocular prosthesis, non-functioning cosmetic replacement for a lost eye...
released the film theatrically in December 2008, 18 months following its Cannes premiere. They later released a DVD box set of Tarr's films which collected The Man from London with Damnation (1988) and Werckmeister Harmonies
Werckmeister Harmonies
Werckmeister Harmonies is a 2000 Hungarian film directed by Béla Tarr, based on the novel The Melancholy of Resistance , by László Krasznahorkai...
(2000). In the United States the film was given a limited release
Limited release
Limited release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing in a select few theaters across the country ....
in May 2009 by IFC Films
IFC Films
IFC Films is an American film distribution company based in New York, owned by AMC Networks. It distributes independent films and documentaries under the IFC Films, Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight. It operates the IFC Center....
, who later made it available through video-on-demand.
Critical reception
Critical reaction to The Man from London was to acknowledge its arresting formalist aesthetic, painstakingly composed scenes and glacial pace, and to lament the lack of an engaging plot or compelling characters. The critical consensus was that the film fell short of Tarr's previous monumental efforts. Among Tarr's mature films, VarietyVariety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
s Derek Elley rated the film on a par with his Damnation (1988) but as inferior to the masterpieces Sátántangó
Satantango
Sátántangó is a film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white, completed in 1994, it runs 7 hours and 12 minutes. It is based on the novel Sátántangó by Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, who has been providing Tarr with stories since his 1988 film Kárhozat...
(1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), and remarked that it was improbable that The Man From London would put an end to the polarization of Tarr's audiences into those who hail him as a director of "visionary genius" and those for whom he is a "crashing bore". Martin Tsai of The New York Sun allowed that Tarr "makes it easy for viewers to get lost in his beautifully bleak world and lose track of time" but complained that in comparison with its predecessors, the film's central theme of guilt seemed insubstantial and the film itself felt "slight and incomplete".
The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reviewer Nathan Lee described The Man from London as "bloated, formalist art", and an "outrageously stylized, conceptually demanding film" that dehumanizes and alienates its audience. In The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
, Kirk Honeycutt complimented the intricacy of the cinematography and the monochrome photography, but judged the film to be "tedious", "repetitive" and "nearly unwatchable". In a review of Cannes' offerings for Time Out, Dave Calhoun too drew attention to the meticulous cinematography and signature shot length's of Tarr's "austere and mesmeric" film, and declared Swinton's dubbing into Hungarian one of the festival's strangest instances of cultural displacement. Reporting from Cannes, The Guardians Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw is a British writer and film critic. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he was President of Footlights.Bradshaw is a film critic for The Guardian...
described the film as "bizarre and lugubrious, but mesmeric", and praised the muted performance of Agi Szirtes in the role of Brown's wife as "strangely compelling". Reviewing the film following its theatrical release, he found the dubbed dialogue affected and odd, the score doom-laden, the occasional humour mordant, and the cinematography mesmerising, remarking that net effect was "unsettling, sometimes absurd, sometimes stunning". Ed Gonzales of The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
concluded that the film "stands as an example of style for the sake of pure and intense but dispassionate style".
External links
- The Man from London at the Cannes Film Festival2007 Cannes Film FestivalThe 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the sixtieth, ran from 16 to 27 May 2007. Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights opened the festival, and Denys Arcand's The Age of Ignorance closed...
- Trailer at Cineuropa.org
- Interview with Tarr from May 23, 2007 at Cineuropa.org