It was heralded by Le Monde in 1976 as “the first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of cinema”. Nearly 50 years later, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles has become the first feature by a female film-maker to be named the “greatest film of all time” by Sight and Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute (BFI).
Akerman’s 70s classic, which follows the meticulous daily routine of a middle-aged widow over the course of three days – including having sex with male clients for her own and her son’s subsistence – topped the decennial poll this year for the magazine, pushing Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to second place and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane to third.
