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 Corsican 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.

The French distributor blamed this on poor dubbing and a late showing, though the press was put off by the film's extended shots and leaden pace.

Critical reception to The Man from London was generally positive, though less adamant than that of the director's previous two works; while reviewers spoke in glowing terms of the formidable cinematography and meticulous composition, they felt the film lacked compelling characters.

[4] The film concerns a middle-aged railway pointsman, 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).

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.

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.

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.

[7][9] The ensemble cast of the film included Czech Miroslav Krobot, Briton Tilda Swinton, and the Hungarians János Derzsi and István Lénárt.

The agreement with Ognon and Coficiné has been concluded, the signed contract has been submitted to the court in Paris and we shall soon start shooting the film which is now relieved from the burden of the past.

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.

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.

[3] In the meantime, the French partners Mezzanine Film declared their discomfort with the scale of the production, and after mutual agreement with the producers, left the project on September 5, 2005.

[3][11] 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.

[13] Although its showing was highly anticipated,[18] the slow pace and prolonged shots of the film "had the press fleeing like panicked slaughterhouse cattle" as The New York Times put it,[13] and it won no prize.

[19][21][22][23][24] 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.

[4][12][33][34] Variety's Derek Elley rated the film on a par with his Damnation (1988) but as inferior to Sátántangó (1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), remarking 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".

[35] 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.

[36] 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".

[37] In a review of Cannes' offerings for Time Out, Dave Calhoun too drew attention to the meticulous cinematography and signature shot lengths of Tarr's "austere and mesmeric" film, and declared Swinton's dubbing into Hungarian one of the festival's strangest instances of cultural displacement.

[38] Reporting from Cannes, The Guardian's 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".

[39] 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".