Jeanne Dielman: ‘greatest film of all time’ is a masterpiece of slow cinema that richly details life’s quiet intricacies

Every ten years the British Film Institute’s (BFI) in-house magazine, Sight and Sound, polls a large number of critics and film-writers to produce a list of the greatest films of all time.The number one slot is usually given to a predictable, established classic like Citizen Kane (five times) or Hitchcock’s Vertigo. But in a welcome surprise, 2022’s poll was topped instead by a three-and-a-half-hour Belgian film, directed by a woman. Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, follows in obsessive (some would say excruciating) detail, the gestures and rituals of a housewife and single mother, the eponymous Jeanne Dielman.

Source: Jeanne Dielman: ‘greatest film of all time’ is a masterpiece of slow cinema that richly details life’s quiet intricacies – News – University of Liverpool