Never on Sunday

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Dionisis T A film that makes you proud to be Greek! Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 11/16/24 Full Review Russ Alternate Title: "Fleet's In!" Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 12/18/23 Full Review Audience Member Politically and culturally I’m completely on board with Dassin in this one. However, it is really hard to take and even gross watching Melina hurry off to the latest ship to arrive to start fu*king as much as possible. This doesn’t age well. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 09/08/23 Full Review CKB After being blacklisted in the U.S., director Jules Dassin emigrated to France, gaining an international reputation for his brilliant 1955 film Rififi, the father of caper films. That year he discovered the novels of Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis and met Greek actress Melina Mercouri, who became his favorite actress and eventual wife. After making He Who Must Die (based on Kazantzakis' Christ Recrucified) with Mercouri, Dassin was now an enthusiastic philhellene, and in 1960 he wrote and directed Never on Sunday to showcase Mercouri's talents and celebrate the culture of modern Greece. This became an international hit, to the dismay of decency protectors who objected to showing a prostitute living such a happy existence. Yet Gigi, about a young girl being groomed for a courtesan's life, had also been a hit just two years before, so audiences were clearly open to such worldly naughtiness by the end of the buttoned-down 1950s. Dessin took the basic elements of Kazantzakis' The Life And Times Of Alexis Zorba (gleefully impersonated by Anthony Quin in 1964's Zorba the Greek), where an earthy Greek man introduces a stuffy young British intellectual to life, and changed it into the story of Pygmalion, but in reverse. Homer Thrace, an American tourist and moralistic worshiper of the glories of Classical Greek culture (zealously played by Dassin) is dismayed by the prostitute Ilya's free-spirited promiscuity and independence, considering her lifestyle to be a ‘degradation' of his intellectual fantasy of ancient Greece. His efforts to reform her backfire, however, and it is the repressed Homer who finds redemption in celebrating life for the first time. Dassin's Homer is a parody of arrogant Americans, enjoying their brand new postwar superpower status, who expected every foreign place they visited to conform to their narrow, straight-laced values. Dassin's direction is dazzling from the start, Mercouri's performance rightfully earned a Best Actress award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and the title song by Manos Hatzidakis became an international hit in its own right. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/07/23 Full Review harry d Great movie - Very entertaining! Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review steve d The story and acting are fun but the script is weak. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Never on Sunday

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