''Three Days and a Child'' ( he, שלושה ימים וילד, translit. ''Shlosha Yamim Veyeled'') is a 1967 Israeli

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

directed by

Uri Zohar Uri Zohar ( he, אורי זוהר; 4 November 1935 – 2 June 2022) was an Israeli film director, actor and comedian who left the entertainment world to become an Orthodox rabbi. Biography Uri Zohar was born in Tel Aviv. His parents were Polis ...

. 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.Judd Ne'eman, "Israeli Cinema," in Oliver Leaman, ed., ''Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film'' (Routledge, 2001), p. 311.

Plot

Eli (

Oded Kotler Oded Kotler ( he, עודד קוטלר; born 5 May 1937) is an Israeli actor and theatre director. He is best known for his role in the film '' Three Days and a Child'' (1967), for which he received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor ...

) is a young graduate student in math who lives with his girlfriend in

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

. 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

- 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 li'salienated 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."Eldad Kedem
''The Kibbutz and Israeli Cinema: Deterritorializing Representation and Ideology''
(PhD, University of Amsterdam, 2007), p. 78 (retrieved 12 November 2012).

Critical reception

''Three Days and a Child'' was a great success, critically and commercially, selling some 308,000 tickets. It was entered into the

1967 Cannes Film Festival The 20th Cannes Film Festival was held from 27 April to 12 May 1967. The Grand Prix du Festival International du Film went to the '' Blowup'' by Michelangelo Antonioni. The festival opened with '' J'ai tué Raspoutine'', directed by Robert Hosse ...

where it was nominated for Best Film and

won the award for Best Actor.

References

External links

*{{IMDb title, id=0138100, title=Three Days and a Child 1967 films 1960s Hebrew-language films Films about the kibbutz 1967 drama films Israeli black-and-white films Films directed by Uri Zohar Israeli drama films