The Man from London

In a port town, Maloin, a railway signalman, watches the harbour at night from his tower. Below, two men fight, one falls into the water, and a suitcase is left behind. Maloin takes it. There is money inside. After that he does nothing, and doing nothing is precisely the subject of the film. What interests it is not crime but the waiting that follows a decision. Maloin does not spend the money, does not confess, does not run; he only waits, and the people around him begin to sense that he is holding something. The form is Béla Tarr's usual method: black and white, very long takes, a camera moving at close to walking pace. The opening shot scans a ship in the harbour from bottom to top for minutes. Mihály Víg's score repeats a single motif. The source is a novel by Georges Simenon. The production was cut in half by disaster: the French producer Humbert Balsan died by suicide in 2005 and shooting stopped, with the film only completed years later. That delay changed its budget and its crew. Miroslav Krobot plays Maloin and Tilda Swinton his wife, with Swinton's voice dubbed into Hungarian. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema and Tarr's form. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for incident; the narrative is deliberately still and some shots approach ten minutes.