Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles

Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) is a widow, living with her son Sylvain (Jan Decorte) in an apartment in Brussels. We never hear her name – we only know it from the film’s title. Chantal Akerman’s film follows Jeanne through three days, as she cooks, cleans, shops, makes dinner for her son. And, in her afternoons, she receives clients as a prostitute.

Jeanne Dielman is a landmark feminist film, and its influence has been widespread. (Todd Haynes’s Safe is clearly indebted to its aesthetic strategies.) Akerman was heavily influenced by experimental filmmakers, in particular the Canadian Michael Snow, and she brought their ideas of time, duration and cinematic space to bear on this film. Many scenes play out in real time, symmetrically composed before a fixed camera aet at a slightly low angle, a camera that never comes in for close-ups. The film subverts the narrative model that other films would use. It foregrounds domestic scenes that other filmmakers would cut out entirely as unimportant and undramatic, and elides what they might see as dramatically significant. (Until the end of the film, all we see of Jeanne’s prostitution activities are the clients arriving – then, after a cut, leaving.) But these scenes, rituals even, need to be established so that we can tell when they begin to be disrupted, asound the halfway mark. Jeanne gets up earlier than normal, which gives her extra time she does not know how to fill. She goes to shops before they are open. She leaves the lid of the vase, where she keeps her prostitution takings, open. She lets the potatoes overcook. Her hair is out of place. These subtle signs of disturbance lead up to a finale that is unexpected but inevitable.

The film on this DVD runs 201:40. Give or take a minute or so, that’s the running time of The Godfather Part II, Malcolm X and The Return of the King. Large-scale films, epic in approach and subject matter. Yet, in its way, Jeanne Dielman is an epic too, an epic of the quotidian and seemingly mundane: it asserts that this ordinary woman, and her life, is worthy subject matter for cinema, and for such an extended running time.

Chantal Akerman (she’s credited here with a middle name, Anne) was only twenty-five when she directed Jeanne Dielman, and as she herself admits, it had an impact which she has never replicated and probably never will. Delphine Seyrig is on screen throughout, intentionally deglamourised. It’s a remarkable performance, given that she has no dialogue for long stretches of the film. We’re never inside her head – although you could argue that the entire film is an expression of her state of mind – but the film’s pace allows us time to watch her, to take in the subtle shifts of her expression. Akerman's voice is heard as the off-screen neighbour whose baby Jeanne looks after – yet another gendered role for her.

Needless to say, Jeanne Dielman will not be for everyone. But given a chance, it’s a compelling piece of work, and entirely deserving of a place in the Criterion Collection.

The DVD

Jeanne Dielman is number 484 in the Criterion Collection. It comprises two dual-layered discs, both encoded for Region 1 only.

The first disc contains the film, transferred anamorphically at a ratio of 1.66:1. Akerman supervised and approved the transfer, which was created from the original camera negative.The results are excellent, and any softness is presumably due to the original film (which I hadn't seen before now).

The soundtrack is the original mono, presented over a single channel. There is no music save that heard during the action of the film, and long stretches without dialogue, so ambience becomes vitally important. The soundtrack is clear and well-balanced. English subtitles are optional for the feature and all the extras save one.

The extras take up Disc Two. First off is “Autour de Jeanne Dielman” (68:45). Sami Frey shot this on black-and-white videotape while the film was being made. We see Akerman and Seyrig discussing the central role and the latter’s interpretation of it, and the contributions of the crew. There are eight chapters, and an index is provided.

Next up, Akerman is interviewed (20:20), in 2009. She discusses her influences and early career, including her discovery of experimental film while staying in New York in the early Seventies – where she met the cinematographer of Jeanne Dielman, Babette Mangolte. Given the feminist intent of the film, Akerman says that it was important to her to have as many women in the crew as possible – which for certain jobs, it wasn’t. (Sally Potter's The Gold Diggers, from 1983, was the first feature film with an all-female crew – including Mangolte as DP.)

Babette Mangolte is also interviewed (22:41), and she talks of how she met Akerman and the films they made together. She also comments that her use of low angles, which became something of a trademark (filming the characters “as if they were giants”) might have something to do with the fact that she and Akerman are both short women! She did not get to see Jeanne Dielman from beginning to end until a few years after its release, when she came to realise that she had contributed to what she considered a masterpiece. She speaks in English, and unfortunately no subtitles are available for this item.

A third interview is with the director's mother Natalia (28:13), shot on video in 2007 (with a static camera again) in her kitchen. Chantal Akerman stays offscreen for the most part. Her questions were originally to be edited out, but keeping them in was the right decisio, as the rapport between mother and daughter is very evident, and this conversation is very engaging. Not many DVD producers would have thought to include an extra like this, so full marks. There are four chapters, with an index.

The remaining items are archival. “Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman” (17:04), is an extract from the French TV series Cinéma de notre temps. It features the director sitting on a chair and talking to camera from written notes. Although visually a little dull, it's not uninteresting to listen to. Further back in time, from February 1976, comes an interview from French TV (6:52) shortly after the film's release and features Akerman and Delphine Seyrig and shows how much different the actor and the character are.

Finally, Saute ma ville (13:03) is Akerman's first short film, in black and white 16mm, made in 1968 when she was eighteen. She plays the leading role as well. It is included as in subject matter (if not camera style) it prefigures Jeanne Dielman in miniature, and leads up to a similarly surprising ending. Akerman provides a short introduction (1:21). This, plus the Chantal and Natalia Akerman and Babette Mangolte interviews above, are in 16:9 anamorphic. Saute ma ville is 1.66:1 non-anamorphic and slightly windowboxed. The older interviews are 4:3.

The booklet contains a long and illuminating essay, “A Matter of Time” by Ivone Margulies, plus transfer notes and credits.