The British magazine Sight and Sound crowned, thursday, the movie Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels (1975), by Chantal Akerman, best film of all time. This is the first time that the work of a female director has been at the head of this influential list, ahead of Cold sweat (Vertigo1958) by Alfred Hitchcock, and Citizen Kane (Citizen Kane1941) by Orson Wells, in first and second place respectively.
“Because it’s global and aimed at voters who are presumably experts, it’s by far the most respected of countless great movie polls – the only one most serious moviegoers take seriously.” , affirmed the famous film critic Roger Ebert, in an article on his blog, in 2012. The awards list has been published every ten years since 1952.
The writing of Sight and Sound states on its website that the results of this year’s awards are drawn from their largest jury to date: “The poll is an important indicator of critical opinion on film, and this year’s edition [la huitième] is the largest ever, with 1,639 critics, programmers, curators, archivists and scholars taking part in the poll, each of whom submitted their top ten list. »
Major feminist work
Qualified by The worldin 1976, “the first female masterpiece in the history of cinema”, Jeanne Dielman left no one indifferent when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Starring Delphine Seyrig in the title role, the film presents the daily life of a single mother and sex worker, as she performs her household chores, one day at a time.
Its long title echoes its long duration (3h21) and the slow rhythm of each of the scenes. The film caused a stir when it was released, not only because it was produced by an almost exclusively female team – extremely rare for the time – but also because it felt like an exercise in style on repetition and monotony, which did not meet with unanimous approval.
This audacious approach by Chantal Akerman, a Belgian experimental filmmaker who died in 2015, was moreover completely intentional, since it supports the feminist purpose of the story. As the days go by – the film is divided into three days – Jeanne Dielman seems to have more and more difficulty doing her household chores. During a cathartic final scene, she kills one of her clients, visibly exasperated, overwhelmed by her condition as a subordinate woman.
A “containment film”
Magnum Opus by Chantal Akerman, Jeanne Dielman has become a major cinematographic work of world auteur cinema, especially in feminist film studies. In 2012, when the last publication of the Sight and Sound charts, the film had risen to 35e rank. Five years after the #metoo movement, it is experiencing a considerable upturn.
“It’s also interesting to see how confinement has revealed it, even to advanced cinephiles, supports Maude Trottier, film critic and co-editor of the magazine. Offscreen. Jeanne Dielman, it’s an interior film, of sustained attention to detail, of daily rituals that go haywire, like us in the first confinement. It’s not just because of the #MeToo movement. »
In a text about the film, published in the journal Panorama CinemaMme Trottier noted “a litany of gestures regulated according to the flattest rituality of a solitary daily life, shown through rigorously framed picture plans tightening this world in the world to which only, it seems, the ghost of a bluish light come from the living room window seems to be beckoning outwardly.
A moving track record
Only four films released since 2012 have made it into the poll’s top 100. It is Portrait of the girl on fireby Celine Sciamma (30e place of Moonlightby Barry Jenkins (60e place of Parasiteby Bong Joon-Ho (tied at the 90e position), as well as get-outby Jordan Peele (95e rank).
Citizen Kane (Citizen Kane1941), by Orson Wells, topped five consecutive polls, from 1962 to 2022. In 1952, The Bicycle Thief (1948), by Vittorio De Sica, took first place. Today it is located at 41e rank, tied with Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa. No Canadian film is among the top 100 films of all time, according to the ranking.