Year: 1975
Director: Chantel Akerman
If only there was a musical equivalent to the Sight and Sound once in a decade poll of the world’s greatest films. Imagine 1,639 music critics, academics, curators and archivists from across the world submitting a top-ten poll. If nothing else it creates a list against which all others can be measured. No chance.Sigh.
So, anyway onto the Sight and Sound greatest films of all time list. The 2022 list delivered a thunderbolt by proclaiming Chantel Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman 23, Rue Du Commerce, Bruxelles number one. Vertigo, the top one last time, falls to two and Citizen Kane is at three. Surely no-one needs a write-up of either of these but Jeanne Dielman I hear you say. What on earth is that. Take this as the start of an impromptu series working its down the films on the list newer to me, and probably to you too. So no 2001 (no 6) or The Godfather (12) but absolutely yes to Beau Travail (no 7). Can’t promise they will all be in strictly rank order as some are as short as 14 mins, others weigh in at over three hours.
We have a brand new number one. Three hours twenty minutes and a film that most people (me included) will have barely heard of. It dates from 1975 and both its making, subsequent slow burn rise in reputation and coronation represent a recognition that the male gaze (hello Hitch!) has been the default setting for cinema for too long. For me it sits in a long line of experimental films, from The Battle of Algiers to Un Chien Andalou that challenge what the subject matter of a film can and should be. Akerman’s film focuses unapologetically on a woman, the magnificently unknowable Delphine Seyrig and shows her at work. For three hours twenty minutes we see in long static takes a working life that starts at dawn and extends with on brief moments of respite for coffee or to write a letter until bedtime. Jeanne lives in the titular flat with her teenage son. Her husband has died and to make ends meet Jeanne takes in what might be termed ‘gentlemen callers’ each afternoon to keep their middle-class existence going. These callers are only one part of a punishing – yet entirely ordinary – domestic routine that constitutes almost all the action of the film. We see her morning routine which starts with preparing breakfast and shining the shoes for her son before school – a great embodiment of the a narcissism and self-regard of teenagers. From then on her day consists of shopping for food, preparing the evening meal, cleaning the flat and an endless list of daily chores essential to keeping their lives going and performed utterly without recognition or gratitude. If ten minute static scenes consisting of tenderising meat for meatloaf or peeling potatoes sounds gruelling, then that’s the point – we experience this domestic labour in near real-time. There are no cut-aways, incidental music or fancy editing to enliven Akerman’s laser-like focus on the work and the routine.
If the first half sets up an unchanging and virtually identical daily routine, the second half sees it unravel – a lost button for a jacket here and overboiled potatoes there are all it takes to set Jeanne’s world spinning. It’s one of cinema’s great endings, and great final scenes, and to breathe a word would take away its power.
There is so much to look at and take in – for example the mother/son relationship is brilliantly drawn without him saying more than a few words – that I’m sure I will be drawn back for a second viewing. The silent family dinners in which mother and son utterly fail to connect with each other are painful in their truth. Beautiful is not the word, but Akerman’s framing is every bit the equal of Hitchcock or Lynch. Where the camera goes and what it sees are tightly controlled, and piecing together every piece of furniture and domestic appliance is yet another thought train that will occur to you as this film has you mesmerised. The sound design, focusing on sounds such as the clack of Jeanne’ shoes on the polished wooden floors, the coffee grinder and the whistling kettle, contributes to the uneasy heightened feelings that come to dominate. An evening interlude of music from the radio becomes almost unbearably rich. For this film asks if these everyday actions cannot be as worthy a subject of film as car chases and gunfights, if a single flat can’t contain as much of interest as a caper chase across continents. Please do let me know your thoughts, but don’t give away the ending for those who are tempted. We watched it in two ninety-minute sessions and after the first half hour when you have to let go of the need for conventional action, or dialogue, I think you’ll be amazed. On the BFI player.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Other films that stretch the possibilities of the medium. And in a way it’s an answer to Belle Du Jour – in which an old male director films an impossibly beautiful middle-class woman who embarks on a career as a prostitute as she’s bored. Here a young female director films an impossibly beautiful middle-class woman who …..
https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/greatest-films-all-time
I should say that Delphine Seyrig had been a big French-language filmstar for a decade when she made this, and Colette in Day of the Jackal. Her glacial flawless face is essential to the film, but also perhaps Akerman’s one concession to conventional film-making.
Indeed, Seyrig is remarkable as the lead character in the Alain Resnais film Muriel (1963).
She’d also made Daughters of Darkness, the vampire film set in a very bleak and grey looking Ostend.
You stole my thunder! I was thinking of doing this, but instead going in the opposite direction (from 100 to 1). I watched one (Get Out) that I hadn’t seen and enjoyed it, but then life got in the way.
Good work.
@dai you can absolutely do this – if you start at 100 we can meet at no 50! I started at one because I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the end….
On my list, just haven’t had time to watch it as I want to do it in one stretch.
Citizen Kane was never the “Best movie ever made” and JD 23 is of a similar ilk but, if this is unbelievingly possible, even more over-rated. Marley & Me is the Obvious And Deservedly Number One – it has has everything. A searing critique of the human condition it certainly is not. Thank the good lord for that. Instead laughter, sadness and above all, love. True Love. If you don’t cry, spoiler alert, when the world’s most adorable dog decides to call it a day then, you sir, are an unfeeling and uncaring wretch.
I hear you. There is a strong part of me that wants to engage with films like this – either to be able to see what all the fuss is about, or at least to be able to say that I’ve seen what all the fuss is about. But there’s another careworn voice in my head that chuckles to me about the flaws of many long-form art works, books and films mainly, in as much as there is a lot of self-regarding baloney surrounding them that always threatens to bury the thing in its own consideration. I’ve weathered hundreds of pages before I’ve decided that all the praise was ill-conceived, and I’ve sat for hours on itchy velveteen until my night-vision is at full strength yet still emerged into the outside world regretting the hours I’ve lost. But heck, eventually my curiosity will likely tempt me to invest again. It’s good to know of the existence of works that might silence that careworn sceptical voice, or at least give it thought to reconsider.
Have you seen the film called Zidane – a 21st Century Portrait, basically a camera follows Z in facial close up for a whole match. Strange background music by Mogwai and crowd noises unless he growls something. Oddly compelling and really stays with you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zidane%3A_A_21st_Century_Portrait?wprov=sfla1
Inevitably it’s on YouTube
Zut alors!
Sapristi!
Excellent initiative, Moseleymoles!
I was listening to a London Review of Books podcast about the 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll.
They thought that “Jeanne Dielman” was OK, but much preferred another French film in the top 20, namely Agnès Varda’s nouvelle vague classic “Cléo de 5 à 7” (1962).
And so I’ve now purchased “Cléo de 5 à 7” on DVD. Haven’t watched it yet. Looking forward to it.
Marley & Me is 0.90p on Amazon. Just sayin’…
Strange how cheap potent video is.
“It is impossibly hard for us in 2073 to accept that fifty years ago Marley & Me was not recognised as The World’s Best Movie Ever. Recent research has shown that at one point in time copies of Marley were available for less than a “pound”! How foolish they were back then. How foolish.”
Excellent review Moseley which makes me at least curious to see a film that I’d never even heard of until this poll. Is there any particular reason that it has come to the fore now after so many years of pretty much being ignored?
It was 36 in the 2012 poll, so has not come from completely out of the blue. I think that the politics of unpaid labour feel a very contemporary subject, as does the precariousness of historically secure middle-class life in the wake of the financial crash. Add to this the severe formalism of the film-making (static camera, long single shots, no music etc.) that also chimes with what is distinct about cinema, as opposed to television.
But I think that it’s also an updating of the canon, and that’s a good thing. It’s thirty two years younger than Citizen Kane, and fifteen years younger than Vertigo. It doesn’t surprise me to see critics questioning whether the same films, getting ever older, should be in the same places. The Sargeant Pepper argument if you will.
Yehbut, does “severe formalism of film-making” include the death of a much-loved pet? If not, count me out.
Any chance that lockdown is the
culpritcause – so many people with so much time to fill, inevitably more get to watch long-winded cinematic explorations and find their qualities?The article below explains how the Sight and Sound poll is voted for “by a body of film critics and academics”
What’s more that group has doubled in size since the last poll:
“Following in the footsteps of other film institutions like the Golden Globes, a huge expansion of the voting body from 846 critics in 2012 to over 1,600 in 2022 has created, in the BFI’s own words, a ‘more diverse group’ that acknowledges the ‘increased influence of film commentators internationally via the internet.’”
And the diversity has increased enormously: “a whopping 80% of new entries come from non-white, non-male filmmakers. 2022′s poll features 11 films from female directors compared to just two in 2012.”
https://www.varsity.co.uk/film-and-tv/24796#:~:text=In%20December%2C%20the%20British%20Film,highly%20anticipated%20and%20possess%20a
Again, makes we wish for a similar exercise in music.
That would be us, wouldn’t it?
We’re not diverse enough.
Although there has quite possibly been significant expansion in our voting bodies in recent years.
It’s been in my list of “things I need to watch” for a good while. I finally got a copy of it in the Barnes & Noble 50% off sale so I will get round to viewing it sometime soon
Bill Douglas’s “Comrades” had been on my list of “things I need to watch” for about 30 years, but last night I actually watched it.
Absolutely tremendous!
I had to look that one up. A film about the Tolpuddle Martyrs. I’ll look out for it.
I suspect it wasn’t too big a box office hit. Not that that is any criterion!
You can borrow the DVD of “Comrades” from me, KFD!
A three-hour film about the Tolpuddle Martyrs is an ideal watch for a mysig fredagskväll.
Seriously, though, it is an absolute cracker.
Three hours of martyrdom and Tolpuddle misery. I may have some problems marketing that to the domestic audience in Bagarmossen.
Then again, if I mention that Italian cinephile Gary likes it, I ma be able to swing it.
Tell ’em Keith Allen’s in it and they’ll be hooked.
And Michael Hordern – whom I actually met once. He came to our school to give a talk!
And, of course, Barbara Windsor. The domestic audience in Bagarmossen could be treated to a double bill of Comrades and Carry On Camping. A Barbara Windsor evening.
Yay! Big fan here, Duco. One of my favourite films. One of the greatest British films ever made.
Three hours of martyrdom and Tolpuddle misery. I may have some problems marketing that to the domestic audience in Bagarmossen.
Then again, if I mention that Italian cinephile Gary likes it, I may be able to swing it.
Incidentally, @Gary and @duco01.
Don’t forget to tell us about your favourite summer LPs!
Twang is getting a wonderful variety of stuff on that thread.
Done. For you. Because I care.
I finally got round to watching JD23 last night, so a few observations then.
I found it absolutely fascinating and it needs that long run time to show a very slow decay and collapse of Jeanne going into that last hour.
Some parts of it I found very disturbing and I’m not sure why, the frustration at the post office being closed (the location of it in a grey and bleak part of town and the group of lads who walk past and seem to mock her). The hidden panic about the button on the coat. There was also a very anxious part with the baby near the end which came to nothing really. When she went to the shop to pick up the mended shoes and it was closed as well. It almost felt like time and reality had adjusted slightly and she’d been left hanging between her on-time world and everything else. All this tension built up in mundane things that only affects you if you’ve been absorbing the previous couple of hours.
You also find that in the longer takes, by concentrating on small details they create questions in your mind. Some of the them get answered almost immediately in the next frame and some don’t.
It caused a bit of an argument after the film as my wife really didn’t like it. She fell asleep in parts as well so didn’t get the full feeling that the film was aiming for. I totally understand why she did as it’s quite draining and hard work watching long sections of drudgery. The sections where she goes outside the flat into the outside world seem like huge sections of action by comparison when in reality not a lot interesting happens when she’s walking about
I’ve mentioned before on another thread that I’m sure this was an inspiration of sorts for The Day Before You Came but another couple music references come to mind.
The first and a bit on the nose is Suburban Relapse and the feel of another few songs of Banshess first album.
And the second was the chair appearing and disappearing in the kitchen put me in mind of Chairs Missing by Wire. The phrase being used to mean that someone has a growing mental health crisis. French Film Blurred as well (about 2hrs in she walks done the street and everything goes out of focus slightly). Also the title of Practice Makes Perfect could have a reference to the repetition in the tasks that Jeanne is completing daily. The album cover itself with the window table and flower pot could almost have been a photo taken in the flat.
Anyway that’s enough for now. There’s loads of extras on the second disc to dig into so I might post again when I’ve found some more insight this.