Never on Sunday

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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 Audience Member Jules Dassin was a well known grecophile and would eventually marry Melina Mercouri, an icon of Greek cinema, both of these passions shine through in this film as he casts himself as an American scholar attempting to convert Mercouri's lively Greek prostitute into an honest woman. This was one of many films in the early 1960s to explore Greek culture and the humor that can be found in it and it's success arguably spawned Madalena (1960), Alice in the Navy (1961) and Zorba the Greek (1964). The film's critical and financial success translated into four Academy Award nominations and as I am attempting to watch the performances of every Best Actress nominee ever I stumbled across this film. Lively Greek prostitute Ilya, Melina Mercouri, plays by her own rules as she only sleeps with men that she likes, holds lavish parties for the men in town on Sundays and refuses to bow to the commands of her overbearing landlord. Her life is disrupted with the arrival of American scholar Homer Thrace, Jules Dassin, who is obsessed with all things Greece and has traveled to the country to explore the moral decline of society as he believes it can be traced back to Ancient Greece. He comes to believe that Ilya represents all that is wrong with modern society and sets about attempting to reform her after being frustrated by the fact that she ignores parts of classical Greek tragedies she dislikes and has no intention of settling down. She agrees to be taught by him for several weeks and the men of the town are dismayed as they no longer have entertainment on Sundays and Ilya becomes downtrodden. When Thrace partners with No Face, Ilya's tyrannical landlord who tries to extract high rent prices from her and the other prostitutes in town, he is discovered and Ilya and the men of the town turn against them. This leaves Ilya to commit to Tonio, Giorgos Fountas, with whom she had been falling in love while Thrace admits that he had lusted after her all along but is now unable to sleep with her. The real appeal of the film comes from Mercouri's lively performance as she is what westerners think of when they imagine the stereotypical ostentatious Greek woman, an idea that has been replicated in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). She is particularly entertaining when she theatrically performs what she believes the plot of Medea to be as she uses her entire body and enchanting dark eyes to draw an audience member in. We understand why all of the men in town would be in love with this woman as Mercouri convinces as a carefree bright figure who has never thought to consider whether her actions are unbecoming to a more conservative man. Part of what makes her so enchanting is how the director, the man who loves her, shoots her as he captures her as though she is a fifty foot tall goddess. I believe that Mercouri earns her Best Actress nomination as she makes the film, which is otherwise rather slight, worth watching. Beyond Mercouri the film doesn't have much to show for itself as the Greek scenery is obviously beautiful but Dassin is not the first to display this on film and the comedy is entertaining enough but nothing feels particularly unique. The romance between Ilya and Tonio was sweet enough but it is only really represented in one scene and it would have been nice to see this more fleshed out. The conflict for Ilya over maintaining her autonomy and carefree lifestyle and potentially achieving lifelong happiness with a man, something that she cannot rely upon, could have been a fascinating idea to explore. Instead Dassin jumps from one joke about Greek culture to the next as Thrace is reprimanded for drinking coffee and encouraged to consume copious amounts of ouzo and is then terrified by the sight of a man smashing bottles on the ground. These jokes are mildly diverting but they don't come together to form a satisfying whole and at the end of this film we are left with the knowledge that Mercouri is a real comedic talent but probably won't remember much else about the film. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Never on Sunday

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