| Notes | Criterion Collection Blu-ray Edition
A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick. In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or as one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:
New 2K digital restoration, undertaken by the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique and supervised by director Chantal Akerman and cinematographer Babette Mangolte, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Autour de “Jeanne Dielman,” a documentary—shot by actor Sami Frey and edited by Agnès Ravez and Akerman—made during the filming of Jeanne Dielman
Interviews from 2009 with Akerman and Mangolte
Excerpt from “Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman,” a 1997 episode of the French television program Cinéma de notre temps
Interview from 2007 with Akerman’s mother, Natalia
Excerpt from a 1976 television interview featuring Akerman and actor Delphine Seyrig
Saute ma ville (1968), Akerman’s first film, with an introduction by the director
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ivone Margulies |
