Three Weeks (1917) Három hét

Filmed several times in the silent film era, the version of Three Weeks screened at this festival — Három hét (1917) — was especially unusual because it was filmed in Hungary. Directed in 1917 by Márton Garas, and starring Sári Fedák and Dezsö Kertész, the story follows the novel closely except for moving the queen’s kingdom back to Serbia, or a country very much like Serbia. The other change from the novel is an overly long (and completely needless) segment that accounts for the queen before she leaves for Switzerland. Three Weeks is an out-and-out essay in Orientalism, which is to say the film describes erotic passion, placed in a distant setting, making it somehow less threatening to censorious minds. It is interesting to get a Hungarian ‘take’ on exactly where the Orient starts. (Apparently, to a Hungarian, the Orient begins somewhere around the Balkans.) To the rest of us, who consider the Orient as starting somewhere between Vienna and Budapest, this film is a rare instance of the Orient trying to film ‘the Orient.’ This version of Three Weeks is a curious, mostly successful hybrid between the Orient of the Western imagination and the real Orient of authentic landscapes and locals.

5% recovery record included
Interchangable links.
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