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The film that critics recently voted as the best of all time is set to return to cinemas next month.
In 2022, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), directed by the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, was voted as the No 1 film ever in a poll by Sight & Sound.
The prestigious poll takes place once a decade, and has previously seen films such as Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, take the top place.
Despite the critical adoration given to Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, it remains little seen by the wider public.
Now, however, the film is set to be re-released in UK and Ireland cinemas on 7 February.
The re-release coincides with a wider retrospective season of Akerman’s films at the BFI Southbank in London, and a new Blu-ray collection of Akerman’s films, released later that month.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is a slice-of-life drama depicting the day-to-day routine of a widowed housewife.
At nearly three and a half hours long, the film has been noted for its lengthy runtime –’ but, according to critics, it’s worth every minute.
In an essay for the BFI, film theorist Laura Mulvey wrote that Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is “made with a cinematic style and strategy closer to avant-garde than mainstream traditions and, furthermore, at just under three and a half hours, demands dedicated viewing”.
“Jeanne Dielman is inescapably a woman’s film, consciously feminist in its turn to the avant garde. In a film that, agonisingly, depicts women’s oppression, Akerman transforms cinema, itself so often an instrument of women’s oppression, into a liberating force.”
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Its inclusion on the Sight & Sound poll marked the first instance of a female filmmaker securing the No 1 spot since the poll’s inception in 1952.
Akerman directed 12 feature films between 1974 and her death by suicide in 2015, at the age of 65.
The 2022 poll saw previous winner Vertigo relegated to second place, while the rest of the top five included Citizen Kane in third, Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) in fourth, and Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love in fifth.
Among the modern filmmakers to have cited Akerman’s opus as an inspiration are Sean Baker (Anora), and Barbie’s Greta Gerwig, who revealed that she included a shot of a mother sewing in the film Lady Bird as an homage.
This post was originally published on here
