Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) lives in a small apartment in Brussels. She is a middle-aged widow, mother, homemaker, and part-time prostitute whose existence is dominated by routine – the preparation of meals, the running of errands, visits from her clients, and evenings with her teenage son Sylvain (Jan Decorte) – until the cracks start to show.
In December, Chantal Akerman’s 1975 masterpiece was voted the Greatest Film of All Time by 1600+ film critics, academics and curators in Sight & Sound magazine’s prestigious once-a-decade poll. A singular blend of feminism, modernism, and the avant-garde whose hypnotic rhythms and rigorous attention to detail make for a riveting, unforgettable experience, Jeanne Dielman is a reminder that Hollywood’s mode of storytelling is only one among many. This is not a difficult film but it is different from what we are usually spoon-fed by the commercial mainstream. Akerman concentrates us on the daily routines that constitute Jeanne’s life, often shared in real time (though the movie compresses three days into three hours). Time becomes the film’s principal aesthetic and core experience. In this, it cemented and built on the work of Andy Warhol and transformed our understanding of what cinema can do.
Jeanne Dielman came in at #4 in Sight & Sound’s poll of film directors. In 2012, it came in at #35.
Sunday’s screening in our new PANTHEON series will feature free refreshments and a short introduction by Alla Gadassik, Associate Professor, Media History & Theory, Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
Who wants to see an avant-garde feminist masterpiece, other than feminists and the avant-garde? You should. Chantal Akerman’s 1975 movie is still massively important … Jeanne Dielman is immersion cinema, a brilliant example of maximal minimalism that fuses viewer with subject so profoundly, the marathon experience transcends simple spectatorship.
Stephen Garrett, Time Out New York
Severe yet majestic … Nothing can quite prepare the first-time viewer for the force of Ms. Akerman’s concentration, for the film’s overwhelming concreteness or the horrifying logic of its ending.
Dennis Lim, The New York Times
Jeanne Dielman is inescapably a woman’s film, consciously feminist in its turn to the avant garde. On the side of content, the film charts the breakdown of a bourgeois Belgian housewife, mother and part-time prostitute over the course of three days; on the side of form, it rigorously records her domestic routine in extended time and from a fixed camera position. 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.
Laura Mulvey, Sight & Sound
Chantal Akerman
Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte
Belgium/France
1975
In French with English subtitles
The Greatest Film Ever Made – Sight & Sound magazine, 2022
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Producer
Corinne Jénart, Evelyne Paul
Screenwriter
Chantal Akerman
Cinematography
Babette Mangolte
Editor
Patricia Canino
Also in This Series
Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise)
The crowning glory of classical French cinema, this sumptuous melodrama brings to life the early 19th century Boulevard du Crime in Paris, where popular audiences for mime shows and carnival rub shoulders with wealthy patrons of classical theatre.
The Wild Bunch (Director's Cut)
The Mexico/Texas borderlands, 1913: Pike (William Holden) leads his gang of aging outlaws on a foray south for one last hurrah. Peckinpah's masterpiece, a savage lament for men who believe in nothing but find respect by dying in vain.
The Ascent
During the darkest winter of WWII, two Soviet partisans venture through the backwoods of Belarus in search of food, always at risk of falling into enemy hands. In her masterpiece Larisa Shepitko zeroes in on profound spiritual and philosophical themes.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Céline Sciamma's queer costume drama -- about a painter covertly studying a young noblewoman who refuses to sit for her portrait -- was voted 30th Greatest Film Ever Made in a 2022 poll, the highest ranking film of the past decade.
I Am Cuba
Infused with a palpable love for the country and a righteous anger at the injustices of the Batista era, I Am Cuba features some of the jaw-dropping camerawork ever filmed. A euphoric celebration of Cuba, the Revolution, and revolutionary cinema.
The Colour of Pomegranates + The House Is Black
This month's Pantheon screening is a double-bill, Sergei Parajanov's extraordinary evocation of the life and work of C18th Armenian poet Sayat Nova, and, The House is Black (22 min), the only film directed by the great Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940