Cinema
Three Days and a Child
שלושה ימים וילד
Uri Zohar · 1967
Synopsis
Eli has left the kibbutz and lives in Jerusalem, where he studies and teaches mathematics, with his girlfriend Yael, who studies botany. Noa, whom he loved at the kibbutz and who rejected him, entrusts her little boy, Shai, to him for three days, together with her husband Zeev: the couple are leaving the kibbutz in their turn and are taking the university entrance examinations. Eli walks the child around the city, from a cemetery to a wall, from a swing to thistles; memories of his love return and, without knowing whether he is Shai's father, he moves from tenderness to dangerous games.
Context
The screenplay, by Dan Ben-Amotz, Uri Zohar and Amatzia Hiuni, who produced the film, follows a story from A. B. Yehoshua's collection Facing the Forests; the characters bore other names there. David Gurfinkel shot it in the last months of 1966 with techniques drawn from the New Wave, but Zohar kept a continuous narrative and a measure of melodrama; the music is by Dov Seltzer. The premiere took place on 11 January 1967. Yehoshua, almost kept at a distance, said he was dissatisfied with Zohar's reading, above all a love scene with a married neighbour absent from his text. The critic Zeev Rav-Nof hailed it as the first Israeli film free of provincialism.
Who it is for
An hour and a half, in Hebrew. It is best to know that the essential plays out in the character's memory, and that the kibbutz of his recollections stands in contrast to the city where he lives.
Prizes and reception
Best Actor award at Cannes for Oded Kotler in 1967, where the film was in competition; about 308,000 admissions.