Three Days and a Child

Three Days and a Child (Hebrew: שלושה ימים וילד‎, translit. Shlosha Yamim Veyeled) is a 1967 Israeli drama film directed by Uri Zohar. It is a modernist adaptation of a short story by the same name by A. B. Yehoshua and draws on the techniques and sensibilities of French New Wave cinema.[1]

Three Days and a Child
Film poster
Directed byUri Zohar
Produced byAmatsia Hiuni
Written byDahn Ben Amotz
Uri Zohar
Amatsia Hiuni
StarringOded Kotler
Music byDov Seltzer
CinematographyDavid Gurfinkel
Edited byJacques Ehrlich
Distributed byErgo Media (US)
Release date
1967
Running time
90 minutes
CountryIsrael
LanguageHebrew

Plot

Eli (Oded Kotler) is a young graduate student in math who lives with his girlfriend in Jerusalem. He agrees to babysit Shai (Shai Oshorov), the young son of his beloved former girlfriend, Noa (Judith Solé), and her husband. Eli and Shai spend three days touring Jerusalem, as Eli relives painful memories of his life with Noa on the kibbutz and her subsequent rejection of him. Uncertain if he is the child's father, Eli's feelings towards Shay are ambivalent and for unexplained reasons (perhaps resentment, anger, jealousy, alienation, boredom, or guilt) he plays dangerous games with the boy.

Cast
  • Oded Kotler - Eli
  • Shai Oshorov - Shai
  • Judith Solé - Noa
  • Misha Asherov - Shai's father
  • Illi Gorlitzky - Zvi
  • Germaine Unikovsky - Yael (as Jermain Unikovsky)
  • Stella Ivni - Neighbor
  • Baruch David - Neighbor's husband
  • Shoshana Doar - Yael's mother
  • Nissan Yatir - Yael's father

Themes

According to one student of Israeli film, Three Days and a Child "ostensibly . . .sets up a dichotomy between [Eli's] alienated life in Jerusalem and the kibbutz idyll. His life in the city is characterized by loneliness, despair, estrangement from his lover and a mise-en-scène that stresses desolation, graves and thorns. In the hero’s consciousness, his kibbutz past is a memory of first love, flowering fields and flowing water. Yet . . . this perception of the protagonist is not so clear cut: life in the kibbutz wasn’t so harmonious, whereas his life in Jerusalem was not so terrible."[2]

Critical reception

Three Days and a Child was a great success, critically and commercially, selling some 308,000 tickets.[1] It was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Film and Oded Kotler won the award for Best Actor.[3]

References
  1. Judd Ne'eman, "Israeli Cinema," in Oliver Leaman, ed., Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film (Routledge, 2001), p. 311.
  2. Eldad Kedem, The Kibbutz and Israeli Cinema: Deterritorializing Representation and Ideology (PhD, University of Amsterdam, 2007), p. 78 (retrieved 12 November 2012).
  3. "Festival de Cannes: Three Days and a Child". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 10 March 2009.
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