MYSTERY PICTURE

Well, there were no takers in the competition and the only response I had was a bit of whingeing from across the Atlantic! The answer was that the picture is a painting of the location for Marcel Carne's masterful tragedy of Parisian low-life HOTEL DU NORD (1938). The Hotel du Nord itself can be seen in the picture, it's name slihtly obscured by the words of he blog description. Although the hotel is a real building, it's location on the bank of the canal made the filming difficult so a replica of the whole area was built in a studio to make things easier. One admirer of the film used to cycle past the hotel every day and commented that the set looked more realistic than the real location! Reel life rather than Real Life!