Cinema News: Is ‘Jeanne Dielman’ the best film of all time?

October 31, 2025 | View in browser

By Mark Olsen

Staff Writer

Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

For L.A. locals, it is worth noting that Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" will end its run at the Vista Theater on Tuesday. The theater is one of only four public venues in the world screening the film in VistaVision. If you haven't seen it in that format yet, the clock is ticking.

Among this week's new releases is Richard Linklater's "Nouvelle Vague," which chronicles the making of Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking debut "Breathless" and stars Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg and Guillaume Marbeck as Godard. ("Nouvelle Vague" is also scheduled to start a brief run in 35mm at the Vista on Nov. 8 before launching on Netflix on Nov. 14. Special 35mm screenings are also happening at the Landmark Westwood.)

In her review of the film, Amy Nicholson wrote about "Nouvelle Vague" as a celebration of the creative impulse, with Linklater looking back at his own influences while also encouraging future generations to make something for themselves.

As she said, "The paradox of 'Nouvelle Vague' is that it trumpets the urgency to make something fresh while itself rewinding to show how something was done 65 years ago. Yet Godard built his own career on the twin tenets of homage and upheaval, injecting his adoration for Humphrey Bogart into a film that would change the cinema forever, and continuing on to make more movies that eventually were nothing but allusions to other movies while being distinctively his own. Creativity has no limits. Just pick up a camera."

Back for the fall preview, I spoke to Deutch about playing Seberg, the American actor living in Paris who would see her career reborn when "Breathless" became an international sensation. For Deutch, it was rewarding to explore how the chaos and uncertainty that surrounded the making of "Breathless" made its way onscreen into the film that audiences still love today.

"There's always that layer when you're filming a movie — it's just people don't know it's there," he said. "No one ever watches the movie and knows that day you got into a fight with your husband or your dog died or it was raining and your mascara was smearing. No one has any context and no one really cares. Generally they see it for what it is. But you feel it and see it and remember."

Since we already covered lots of Halloween-related screenings last week, we won't go deep into them now, except to note that Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude's satirical take on "Dracula" hits local theaters this week. Additionally, "Back to the Future" returns to theaters this week for its 40th anniversary and Amy wrote a review in celebration of that re-release. It's a movie she calls "the modern era's zippiest comedy about the collapse of the American dream, with a sting that would have had its forefathers Frank Capra and Preston Sturges cheering: How the dickens did Robert Zemeckis get away with that?"

Chantal Akerman and 'Jeanne Dielman'

The American Cinematheque is launching a series dedicated to Belgian-born filmmaker Chantal Akerman with a 35mm screening on Sunday at the Egyptian Theatre of her 1975 masterwork "Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles." The film was voted the greatest film of all time in the most recent Sight and Sound critics poll.

Akerman, who died in 2015 at age 65, was only 25 years old when she made the film, which has a meditative quality due to its extended running time of over three hours but also a blistering undercurrent of anger and dissatisfaction. Delphine Seyrig plays the title character, a widow who goes about her housework keeping up her apartment and raising her teenage son while working as a prostitute.

Writing about the film for the Los Angeles Times in 2004, Manohla Dargis said that "the standard line on 'Jeanne Dielman' … is that it's a feminist classic, a designation that's both perfectly true and reductive."

In 2009, Sam Adams said of the film, " 'Jeanne Dielman' belongs to the rare class of films capable of transforming the world around you, though it requires the kind of patience and dedication that can be hard to come by at home. (In other words, turn off your phone, then watch.) The reward is a new sense of connection to actions that normally pass without thought, a sense that every flip of a light switch is an experience to be savored for its pure physical sensation, a step in a dance that never ends."

Also screening in the Cinematheque's series are some of her short films, plus the 1974 feature "Je Tu Il Elle," 1976's essay film "News From Home" and the 1972 documentary "Hotel Monterey."

Diane Keaton in 'Baby Boom'

Not unexpectedly, both Vidiots and the American Cinematheque have launched series in tribute to Diane Keaton. On Saturday Vidiots will show 1987's "Baby Boom," the first of Keaton's collaborations with Nancy Meyers, credited as co-writer and producer. (Meyers' husband at the time, Charles Shyer, co-wrote and directed.)

Keaton stars as J.C. Wyatt, an ambitious rising executive in New York City. After the death of a distant relative, J.C. is charged with the care of an infant, which turns her world upside down. After moving to Vermont, she falls for a small-town veterinarian (a charming Sam Shepard) and finds unexpected business opportunities. A witty satire of the notion of "having it all," the film is a spectacular showcase for Keaton's sparkling screen presence.

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In his original review, Kevin Thomas said of Meyers and Shyer, "They're not afraid to be sophisticated and screwballish in the best '30s tradition, and they know just how far to exaggerate for laughs without leaving touch with reality entirely or destroying sentiment. The humor in 'Baby Boom' is sharp without being heartless. They've also presented Diane Keaton with a dream part. She's funny, she's smart, she's sexy, she's tough and she's vulnerable — all at the same time. … Keaton in 'Baby Boom' brings back memories of Hepburn and Colbert in their salad days."

Points of interest

'Red Sun' at Mezzanine

Recent releases like "One Battle After Another" and "The Mastermind" have tapped into an air of discontent and a curiosity about radical politics. So the timing of Mezzanine's screening Wednesday at 2220 Arts + Archives of the 1970 German film "Red Sun," directed by Rudolf Thome, could not be better.

Released the same year the notorious revolutionary group the Red Army Faction was formed, "Red Sun" is a about a group of young women who live together under an unusual pact — that they must kill any romantic partner after five days. This gets complicated after Peggy (Uschi Obermaier, one of the emblematic stars of the moment in Germany) encounters an old boyfriend, Thomas (Marquand Bohm), who wants to rekindle their relationship. Stylish, sexy and provocative, this movie is very much of its time but perhaps also has a few things to say about our present moment.

Dan Gilroy and 'Nightcrawler'

On Wednesday, Vidiots will screen 2014's "Nightcrawler" with writer-director Dan Gilroy in-person. Stylish and disturbing, the film evokes a powerful vision of Los Angeles in telling the story of a small-time crook named Lou Bloom (a ferocious Jake Gyllenhaal) who falls into working as a freelance nighttime news cameraman and becomes more involved than he should in the world that he is capturing, walking an ethical and moral tightrope. The cast also includes Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed and Bill Paxton.

In his review at the time, Kenneth Turan wrote, " 'Nightcrawler' is pulp with a purpose. A smart, engaged film powered by an altogether remarkable performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, it is melodrama grounded in a disturbing reality, an extreme scenario that is troubling because it cuts close to the bone. … Despite the melodrama that increases as 'Nightcrawler' moves to a conclusion, there is no denying that something real is in the wind here, something about us as a society, how we talk and what we value. No matter what we think of Lou and his exploits, it is hard to deny that the world he thrives in is the one we have made."

Ahead of the film's world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, I spoke to Gilroy about the origins of Gyllenhaal's character. "I didn't look at Lou as a deranged, damaged person," he said. "I really wanted to look at a person who doesn't have the programming and support from childhood and has limited tools to survive. To me the through-line of the character was somebody trying to survive in today's world. … We were trying to get something that felt real, that felt topical, that felt current, that had a relevance to people's lives."

Barbara Loden's 'Wanda'

Directed by its star Barbara Loden, "Wanda" (1970) had fallen into obscurity until a 2010 restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archive helped put it in front of new audiences and restore it to its rightful place as a much-admired, deeply influential work. The archive will show the film in 35mm on Sunday at the Billy Wilder Museum, with a Q&A with Elena Gorfinkel, author of "BFI Film Classics: Wanda," to be moderated by Maya Montañez Smukler. A book signing will precede the film.

Loden, known as an actor in such films such as "Splendor in the Grass" (directed by her husband, Elia Kazan), stars as the title character, who drifts aimlessly around Pennsylvania coal country. Yet there is a willfulness to her performance that is captivating, as the film watches a woman struggle to find a place for herself in the world.

Writing about the film in 2018, Justin Chang said, "What [Loden] achieved with her directorial debut was not just a radical vision of Middle America in economic and existential crisis, though that in itself would have been plenty. She also brilliantly challenged the industry's stereotypes, its assumptions that she was just another beautiful Hollywood blonde rather than a restless, pioneering film artist."