Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a 1975 film made by Chantal Akerman, has toppled Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo as the British Film Institute-published (BFI) Sight and Sound magazine’s greatest film of all time.

The BFI, since 1952, has been conducting a poll to compile a list of the 100 greatest films of all time. In the 1952 poll, Vittorio De Sica’s neo-realist drama Bicycle Thieves topped the poll. From 1962 onwards, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane managed to top the list till 2012, when Vertigo took over the top spot.

Also Read| Quentin Tarantino’s issues with the Marvel Cinematic Universe explained

However, the Master of Suspense’s reign on the top lasted only 10 years. In the 2012 poll, Jeanne Dielman was at the 36th spot. When the film was first released, French publication Le Monde called it, “the first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema”.

Chantal Akerman was 25 when she directed this drama about the life of a widow who takes to prostitution to fend for herself and her son. The slice-of-life film depicts her journey through a period of three days, where she routinely cooks and cleans, takes care of her son, and has sex with clients during the afternoon.

The way in which Akerman makes prostitution an uneventful part of the mother’s life, who treats it like nothing more than a day job, makes it uncomfortable for middle-class audiences and speaks volumes about sustenance and morality in the modern world.

Also Read| Bruce Lee died of excessive fluid consumption: Study

The film was shot with an all-female crew, which, according to Akerman, had made filming difficult, who later said, “not because they were women but because I didn’t choose them. It was enough just to be a woman to work on my film … so the shooting was awful”.

Akerman’s career began in 1968 and she continued making movies till 2011. Her last film was the documentary No Home Movie, which released in 2015. Akerman died in the same year at the age of 65.