1975 Hit 'Jeanne Dielman' Ranked 'Greatest Film of All Time'

In 2022, Sight & Sound ranked Chantel Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles at No. 1 on their decennial list of the greatest movies ever made. The decision was a controversial one, as the film overtook Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic Vertigo, which had held the top spot previously.

In fact, most casual audiences had never even heard of Akerman's film when it topped Sight & Sound's famous list, which only added to the controversy. Despite its critical acclaim and enduring legacy, it's not the kind of film that ever made a lasting impact on pop culture in the way that filmmakers like Hitchcock often did.

The film (often abbreviated simply to Jeanne Dielman) was released in 1975 by acclaimed Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who had previously found acclaim with projects such as I, You, He, She and Blow Up My Town. The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was released to the public the following year, where most reviews were mixed at best.

Even critics weren't swept up by Jeanne Dielman at first; its challenging runtime and slow-paced, slice-of-life storytelling defied typical narrative conventions and demanded a serious amount of patience from the viewer, which most audiences simply weren't willing to give.

The movie takes place across three days in the life of the titular protagonist, a recently widowed mother in Brussels. Akerman takes a uniquely naturalistic approach to filmmaking, often placing a static camera in a seemingly mundane location and simply letting the characters go about their day without any narrative purpose.

This creates a very slow, methodical pacing that's admittedly challenging at first, but ultimately immerses the viewer in Dielman's life and breaks down the barrier between fiction and reality.

Jeanne Dielman is now considered a cult classic that's a must-watch for anybody interested in film, but critics in the '70s weren't as impressed. Many critiqued it as being boring, mundane, or pointless, as it subverted all contemporary expectations of how a story should be told.

In the years since, Akerman has been retroactively labeled a pioneer of the "slow cinema" movement, which pushes narrative naturalism to its extreme to depict time itself as a sort of character in the story. The New Yorker proudly called it: "...a tour de force of cinematic modernism [that] puts time onscreen as it was never seen before."

Currently, Jeanne Dielman is available to stream in the United States for free on Kanopy, or with a valid subscription on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel. Alternatively, it can be purchased or rented on any major VOD platform, such as Amazon Prime or Apple TV.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on May 25, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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This story was originally published May 25, 2026 at 3:19 AM.