The Man from London

2007 ‘A Londoni férfi’ Directed by Béla Tarr

A switchman at a seaside railway witnesses a murder but does not report it after he finds a suitcase full of money at the scene of the crime.

Miroslav Krobot Tilda Swinton János Derzsi Ági Szirtes Gyula Pauer Erika Bók István Lénárt Mihály Kormos Kati Lázár Éva Almássy Albert Ágnes Kamondy László feLugossy Alfréd Járai

Alternative Titles

L'homme de Londres, 런던에서 온 사나이

mystery crime drama

139 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Naughty aka Juli Norwood ★★½ 2

First off let me say this.. it is no where near the level of excellence that was achieved by Bela Tarr's "The Turin Horse" or "Satantango"! With that being said while its storyline was paper thin the breathtaking cinematography and lingering camera shots of faces reflecting their own private world of hurt were as prolific as jackrabbits!
What I loved most was the noirish fog, shadows and lighting in the opening scene but it was the rhythmic pounding of the waves that soothed this savage beastie!
I couldn't help thinking the dubbing ruined the integrity of the film! It would have felt more genuine had it stayed true to its native language and had been subtitled! As a baby boomer…
Review by Hibiscus ★★★★½

10 reasons I loved this film:
1. The main character has got one of the most intriguing and captivating faces I've ever seen.
2. Some of the best cinematography I've ever seen.
3. Amazing score and musical compositions.
4. Tilda Swinton in French.
5. Film <3
6. Existentialism.
7. Editing(yes, I'm not even kidding).
8. The overall mood, tone and atmosphere, which feels booth classic and completely original.
9. The ending, which might be one of the best endings to any feature length film I've ever seen.
10. The simple fact that this film, while being one of his lesser known films, lives up to every single expectation I had about the infamous Bela Tarr. Can't wait to watch more!
Review by BrandonHabes ★★½ 6

A fight breaks out at a local harbor. A man dies. Another man is witness. And a suitcase full of stolen cash washes ashore, becoming a token of longing for those who cannot spend it without indicting themselves. From this mysterious, almost noir setup, which is actually shot quite stunningly over a 10-minute forensic take, we slowly move away from a cinema of facts, plot, character and meaning to an exercise in obtuse cinematic formalism.
THE MAN FROM LONDON has so much of what I love about Tarr's previous work (glacially slow, hypnotic one-takes; elegantly complex mis-en-scene; gorgeously shot black and white cinematography, etc.). Yet it doesn't really share any of the same depth with the others I've seen. It…
Review by Lars Henriks ★★½

The eternal darkness of Tarr's vision of a French town is broken by a few tiny patches of light here and there, to show lonely, miserable, isolated people being horrible to each other. Again, Tarr shows, what black and white can really be used for, in the hands of a talented, thoroughly depressed misanthrope. Cheers to that!
Tarr has made that point far more eloquently in other films, such as Werckmeister Harmonies. Even though "The Man from London" has more of a (conventional) narrative than other works of Tarr, it seems to have a lot less to say.
The dubbing really annoyed me in this one. I didn't mind it in other films of Tarr, but in "The Man from London" I really longed for some acting.
"The Man from London" is a beautiful painting. Alas, even staring at the most breathtaking painting gets a bit tiresome after three hours.
Still: It's an impressive piece of visual art.
Review by BranDs ★★★★½ 5

After two years of my watching Béla Tarr‘s “The Turin Horse” film, which was a big mistake to start with
a master of bleakness, yet it was an unforgettable cinematic experience that its impact is still haunting my mind and feelings. However, this film “The Man From London” is Tarr‘s first extensive dubbing of Hungarian, English and French languages, “that was necessary in part because the Steadicam operator Marcus Pohlus was audibly panting and weeping in several scenes.” The film is based on the novel of Georges Simenon‘s “L‘homme de Londres.’ the film starts off with a slow pan up from the water to the bow of a ship, shadows all around, the camera slowly climbs up and floating through…
Review by Matthew ★★★★½ 2

I think I'm officially a Tarr fanboy. Everything he makes just resonates with me on a extremely personal level. Also, it doesn't hurt that his films are absolutely fucking gorgeous!
Review by vovin ★★½

In a word: unremarkable.
There isn't a single, memorable thing that separates The Man from London from Tarr's well-known films. The pointlessly French setting nullifies the quasi-apocalyptic aura. The melancholic sense often associated with Tarr feels disturbed thanks to one very loud yelling scene featuring Tilda Swinton. And... well, nothing much occurs in this film—which may well be 'the point'.
As strange as it may sound, the fact that very little happens only makes the film more interesting. The film shows you a mystery and its resolution—but at the end, there are still so many ambiguities and unanswered questions you can't help but feel conflicted and indifferent. The Man from London is still known as a Man from London and life goes on.
Review by Ronan Doyle ★★★★★

What, ho? Is this Béla Tarr with... what's that...? A (relatively) clear plot?! The greatest living director provides (well, adapts) a story more involving and layered than his typical fare, but as ever it's just one of a great number of elements he employs to convey his themes. Were I not so indelibly attached to the haunting beauty of his work in Werckmeister Harmonies I might declare this Mihaly Vig's finest score. It seems redundant to say that Tarr gives us the kind of visuals only he can, from a breath-taking circling of a hypnotic conversation to a complicated scaling of a watchtower, these could all be counted among the finest sequences ever captured on film. More overtly humanistic than his and Krasznahorkai's original stories, there is nevertheless the same nihilistic sense of the drudgery of life and the mundanity of existence that makes these great films so so tough, but so so rewarding.
Review by Tony (tectactoe) ★★★

[56]
Tarr’s variation of the film noir; had Fritz Lang or Nicholas Ray directed this same film, it’d run about 28 minutes. That’s because Tarr doesn’t simply show a group of people walking up to a shed. He follows behind them from about 400 meters away as they slowly approach in deafening silence. I’ve no inherent problem with this type of meditative approach (as I did mildly enjoy the film, my score is lukewarm but still positive), but this doesn’t have the same overwhelming atmosphere that made such measured lethargy so arresting in e.g. THE TURIN HORSE or SÁTÁNTANGÓ, nor does its story compel in the same way. The trappings, despite being dunked in a massively languid framework, feel too…
Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★½

A puzzling work whose intention is hard to grasp, The Man from London is Tarr's most disappointing film not because it's particularly bad but because his filmography from the 1990s onwards is amongst the finest in all of cinema.
Unlike his other masterpieces of recent decades like Sátántangó, Werckmeister Harmonies and The Turin Horse, here Béla Tarr is not concerned in creating an environment and showing us the impoverishered but instead with exploring one man's guilt and moral conscience. The style is, as per usual for latter day Tarr, superb with long, black and white cinematography flowing between characters and locations. The themes are rich and interesting with plenty to dissect although the exploration of guilt and morality doesn't quite match…
Review by puffin ★★★★½ 4

March Around the World 2020
8/30: Hungary (2018: 17th out of 27, 2019: 3rd out of 30)
Béla Tarr's elegance as director is slightly caught up on the fault of atrocious dubbing, but his visual storytelling has not faltered even one step. Some of the images and juxtapositions he builds up here are among the finest he's ever done.
The idea of members of the French press shuffling out to this at Cannes kind of humors me, but it also displays a willingness to have film set in this box of an expected mindset and experience, as if The Man from London is to be watched in the same way you watch Baby Driver. There are a lot of details…
Review by Evan “Kaizō Haya-shill” Pincus ★★★½

Béla Noir! Love the approach to the genre here, very ambient. It ain't a masterpiece, but when it falters it's for very distinctly Tarr reasons. In my (admittedly minimal) experience with the guy, all of his movies tend to be character studies, albiet with the central character being a blighted landscape or a system of doomed/depressed people interlinked. Here, the character in question is one guy. It's not that Tarr can't handle this, he can, it's very compelling, it's that he loooves to luxuriate in his worlds, and here, there isn't much of an interesting world to luxuriate in. 30-40 minutes shorter and you'd be approaching a fantastic and uniquely Béla Tarr crime flick. With this runtime and this much…

Recent reviews

Review by Teresa ★★★★

Just because ceremonious camerawork is my thing.
Review by AYFilmSnob ★★★

A man sees a crime committed and instead of reporting it, takes a suitcase full of money. Then he sits and watches as the local police investigate. This sounds like a crime thriller but it's Bela Tarr so it isn't. Instead this is a lot of long shots focused on the man's face and the dilemma and anguish within his family.
Review by ohheybill ★★★

#TarrOnHulu
Review by hardik ramteke ★★★★½

Instead of cutting the shots he uses camera movement, and he does it perfectly.
Review by Oscar Lau ★★★

Undoubtedly the most disappointing Tarr films in his late period, the poetic rendering of the existentialism and psychological distancing evaporated in The Man from London, instead, we have a film-noir in its most uninspiring form, albeit the expressionistic, engrossing cinematography. It’s thematically quite similar to Damnation, which is very much a crime story. Whilst Damnation chronicles a non-redemptive arc of its alienated male character through a juxtaposition of imagery of the savage nature and introspective dialogues, The Man from London is filled with dreary non-communicative characters. Despite the atmospheric long takes, the film largely lacks a resounding moment that really justifies the minutes we spent with the characters. Nevertheless, the film does successfully elevates the subpar materials with its aesthetic and mise-en-scene. By the way, what’s Tilda Swinton doing there? She’s completely wasted by the insufferable dialogues and the atrocious dubbing.
Added to: Béla Tarr, Ranked
Review by Duran ★★★½

So weird this film was on Hulu, but I’m happy because I couldn’t find it anywhere else!
Formally, this film is as great as the other Tarr’s I’ve seen. I think there was too much of a focus on plot here, however.
Review by Felipe Monteiro ★★★½

Béla-noir, definetly. And for that, the film deserves all the credit. I honestly couldn't imagine how this match between Béla Tarr's style and the genre noir would take place, but he managed to show me that this is possible with a very interesting proposal. But even so, I still consider this one of the most distant of his films in relation to his own filmography, not only for the visual more clean of the images but also for the very less heavy atmosphere that builds the plot. In addition, this film has no striking scenes as we can find in others of his films, such as the gorgeous opening scenes in The Turin Horse and Werckmeister Harmonies. But it's not…
Review by Jared Wagner ★★★★

Absolutely transcendent. The Third Man meets No Country For Old Men by way of Dostoyevsky. A powerful aesthetic experience for those who want an encounter with these images. The surreality of immorality, the reality of the Absurd, the dominance of power over reason, etc. Tate’s camera rarely cuts, however this does not equate to stagnancy. No, Tarr is in constant motion, constantly shifting perspective, showing us how limited a subjective perspective can be even when given a kind of “objective” POV. The camera is not merely a character, or a stand in for the viewer, the camera is the paradoxical dissonance of intense rigidity coupled with a random, uncontrollable, and undefined “gaze”. In the narrative, no character seems to have…
Review by ℳr...!! ★★★

For a filmmaker who is so obsessed with aesthetic rigor, it is strange that Tárr doesn't seem to mind about all that horrible, fake-looking dubbing, yet still this is an evocative film (albeit repetitive and not so well finished) that makes beautiful use of strong black and white contrasts.
Review by Morgan ★½

I really wasn’t expecting to see Tilda Swinton in this.
Review by Luis Cuevas ★★★★

I don’t know many filmmakers that can keep you under arrest by the image they’ve created. It’s the mundane shot in such an epic manner. Props to Bella Tarr for going where every man goes but with a different eye.
Review by gökeeeen ★★★½

Bir “torino atı” kadar mükemmel değil; ama bela tarr filmi olduğu(verdiği izlenimi) kesin, sinematografisi, uzunca planları, hissettirdiği atmosferi ve tabi ki özellikle yakın açıdayken çalan müziği ile. Filmde geçen zamana bakarsak; film giyim kuşam, karafilm atmosferi ve siyahbeyaz olmasının getirdiği etki ile 1930lar 1940lar havası verse de güncel banknotlardan ve henriette.nin çalıştığı mağazada lcd ekran görmemizden; hikayenin filmin çekildiği zamana yakın geçtiği söylenebilir; ancak cep telefonu hatta araba yok; gerçi yönetmen için bunların pek bi önemi de yok, sonuçta tarihsel hatta polisiye bir film değil bu🍷