The British Film Institute has declared that Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is the greatest film of all time. Every ten years, the Institute, via its magazine Sight & Sound, organizes an international poll of critics to list the 100 best movies ever made. The 1975 drama was directed by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who died in 2015 at age 65.
"The Sight and Sound poll is now a major bellwether of critical opinion on cinema and this year's edition (its eighth) is the largest ever, with 1,639 participating critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics each submitting their top ten ballot."
Here's a plot summary of Jeanne Dielman, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly:
"Delphine Seyrig plays the title character, a single mother, and the film portrays three days in her life as she goes about her daily routine. She cooks, cleans, and cares for her son — which includes sex work to pay for their subsistence. All these activities are portrayed at length, with repetition building until things start to go awry."
At 201 minutes, Jeanne Dielman is the longest film to ever top the list. It's also the first time a female director has topped the Sight & Sound list. The first-ever winner of the contest was Bicycle Thieves back in 1952. The film, which is set in post-WWII Italy, concerns the efforts of a father and his son to locate the former's stolen bicycle.
The next several decades saw one film as the unanimous top pick: Orson Welles' classic Citizen Kane. The film, which was about a media mogul and the mysterious Rosebud, was finally surpassed by a film in 2012. That year, the top choice was Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, where Jimmy Stewart plays a man suffering from acrophobia and vertigo who meets a woman. But, of course, saying anything else would be a spoiler.
Other Info on the List
Jeanne Dielman ranked number 35 during the 2012 poll. However, it wasn't the only movie made by a female director to rise drastically in 2022. Clair Denis' Beau Travail, about an ex-Foreign Legion officer, jumped from No. 78 into the top 10. Another film on the list Agnes Varda's Cléo From 5 to 7, about a singer awaiting test results from her doctor, just missed the top 10 by coming in at No. 14.
Another noteworthy movie on the list is Celine Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, about a female painter falling in love with her female subject, which ranked at No. 30. The film premiered in 2019, making it the highest-ranked film of the past decade. For comparison, Moonlight (tied at 60) and Get Out (tied at 95) were also on the list.
In addition to the critics poll, Sight & Sound also polls directors on the greatest films of all time. Jeanne Dielman performed well there too. Though it wasn't No. 1, it did make it into the top 5 at No. 4. The overall winner of that list was Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which also unseated the previous list's winner. The 2012 winner on that list was Tokyo Story.