SIMENON SIMENON "REPORT". REVIEWED: THE MAN FROM LONDON

RTE - 12/11/2020 - Paddy Kehoe - The story of director Bela Tarr's extraordinary English language film 2007 film of Georges Simenon's 1934 novel, The Man from London, starring Tilda Swinton, is as strange as, well, fiction. However, do explore the novel firstly, it is the work of a crime master at the top of his game. [...] this is Georges Simenon firing on all cylinders. The novel appeared as L’Homme de Londres just as the early Maigret series was beginning to make a name for the prolific Belgian novelist (1903-1989). Crime was all very well, but Simenon rather fancied his romans durs or 'hard novels’  which he deemed to be more important, more existentially-minded, than the police procedural Inspector Maigret stories. Perhaps The Man from London is an early example of a roman dur, and if that is what it is, it is almost, if not actually on a par with great romans durs such as The Hand (Le Main) or The Blue Room (La Chambre Bleue)...>>>