Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
(Chantal Akerman, France/Belgium 1975, 202 min., DCP, French with English subtitles)
Recently appearing at the top of Sight and Sound magazine’s 2022 poll of The Greatest Films of All Time, this film dethroned Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which topped the previous list (and will be screening at the Dryden in April), and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, which had dominated the list for fifty years. In perhaps the most prestigious Belgian film ever made, Akerman scrutinizes three days in the methodical life of a middle-class widow (the sublime Delphine Seyrig) who supports herself and her difficult teenage son by taking in a “gentleman caller” each afternoon. Playing with the elasticity of time, Akerman offers a woman in constant motion within a stagnant life. Like Welles with Citizen Kane, Akerman created this feminist masterpiece when she was only twenty-six years old.
Presented with our Community Sponsor, the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House