sbasu-47-608737 Most of the reviews, if not all, have gone through the surface of the movie, looking at the comedy or the simple story aspect. However the movie has much more than this, and if one looks deep, probably it doesn't have any comedy left out. There are only a few movies like this I have seen (another that comes to mind is Ajantrik - of Ritwik Ghatak). For understanding both, we have to just look at the respective directors. Dassin was one of those who had been victimized by the "Red" paranoia of USA and was black-listed under McCarthy code, forcing him to move to Europe. Interestingly even Ritwik was red, in fact compared to him Mr & Mrs Dassin were pale pink. To go inside the skin, the movie there are two very important dialogues. Obviously one at the beginning when Homer(Dassin) indicates his quest, he wants to understand why the civilization is in this shape, captivating but decadent. The second was in the end, "Only way Ilya could be saved is by love" On allegorical level, the the two indicate something entirely different. Illya is the nature whereas Homer - I don't think anywhere he has been indicated to be an author or even philosopher - he is, as was told in the end "American Boy Scout", the up keeper of the moral-values of others, as he feels to be proper. We judge the morality of others through our tinted glass and thereby spoil the fine balance of the nature. This had been done through ages, at national level (Libya, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Ukraine, Poland, Czech,...) or at society level (various religious missionaries to educate and bring to light the barbaric natives.Naturally, we don't blame ourselves for the catastrophe, Homer too didn't. Fortunately in this case the nature didn't allow herself to be spoiled by the boy-scout. It is interesting to see that the movie got so many nomination for Academy, despite the director being black-listed till recently (a la Charlie Chaplin), he even got a nomination for best director, and that is doubly strange, considering the allegories (and also that during this time Vietnam war at its peak).

lasttimeisaw Hollywood blacklist Jules Dassin's Greek comedy, starring his future wife and muse Mercouri, which was a sensational success, acquired 5 Oscar nominations (including BEST DIRECTOR and LEADING ACTRESS, with one win for BEST SONG, the titular NEVER ON Sunday, a record- breaking first-time for a foreign movie). The story is a variation of the Pygmalion, a delectable tug- of-war between a golden-heart Greek prostitute's free spirit and an amateur American philosopher's attempt to save her from the oldest profession.Ilya (Mercouri), a sought-after prostitute lives in the port of Piraeus, who exerts her own volition instead of the highest bid when comes to choose her customer, she meets Homer (Dassin), an American tourist, the scholar type, who clashes with denizens in a bar brawl on grounds of baffling cultural disparity, and reeks of the superior Western morality to persuade Ilya from doing what she does best, Homer is seeking for the truth in the cradle of culture, and immediately correlates Ilya with the fall of the Ancient Greece, it is beyond his understanding why such a marvel of beauty could be so content with her debased occupation. Through their entanglement, especially their vastly contradictory interpretations about Greek tragedy, they agree to try out a tentative plan, Ilya stops receiving her patrons and Homer educates her with literature and philosophy, but a less convincing plot-device eventually would set her back to her larger-than-life spirit, Homer's experiment fails miserably, just one time, a prostitute doesn't need salvation, her Greek blood renders her unbridled exuberance and spontaneity, that's something no education can alter, like her passionate romance with local worker Tonio (Foundas)This Black-and-White picture is a winsome culture-clashing curio, Mercouri unleashes her divine charisma which infatuates not just Homer and her regular clientèle, also us, wide-eyed viewers as well, her personification as the object of passion, a magnificent force-of-nature defies all the earthly categorization, eventually becomes an invitation card for people to visit her enchanting motherland; to that effect, Dassin sacrifices her character for bookish caricature, utters "Ilya, you are a Greek, you must be logical, since it is established by Aristotle" and a devoted second fiddler for Mercouri to hog the limelight entirely. Behind the camera, Dassin is bent on infusing a thumping pulse of vivacity to the not-so-original script, influences a well-calculated balance between exotica and erotica. Fairly speaking, the settings of its characters are reasonably behind our time, and the arc of Ilya's transition is done perfunctorily, otherwise, the appreciation could have been higher by a new wave of audience.

secondtake Never on Sunday (1960)An odd movie—odd partly because people still watch it despite its painful artifice. Nothing is quite right, and a lot is quite wrong, including the humor, the gender assignments (sexist stuff), and the larger plot, what there is of it. It's set in Greece, and has a painfully dated and almost naive tourist view of Greek "culture" on the docks of a fishing village.Director Jules Dassin, born in Middletown, Connecticut just as Homer, the leading rather clueless character of this movie, loved Greece. He was not Greek, but Russian Jewish, but he died there after his up and down career as a director. Dassin has a following of sorts for other films, mainly noirish pieces like "The Naked City" with its debt to Weegee. Here he goes for a thin drama about a prostitute who everyone loves (all the men, of course, especially because she works for free, but the women, apparently, also, how nice!). He's an uneven director, and a not so compelling actor, but apparently no one had the heart to tell him this.There is some sharp acting here, not what you would call naturalistic, but colorful, especially from the leading woman, Melina Mercouri. And all the location shooting is fun, for sure.So you can get yourself in the mood for this kind of European old school film, but for 1960 it's weirdly out of date, and it lacks the punch of other true Euro productions of the time (and I'm not just talking French New Wave, but all kinds of great post-war movies). I'm usually willing to go with the flow because I like old styles and am willing to shake off some of the weird and imperfect quirks. But I had trouble doing that here, and so it ended up being a chore, and almost an embarrassment.

jotix100 "Never on Sunday", that charming Jules Dassin film, was shown unexpectedly on cable recently. The inspired story of a happy prostitute working the waterfront of Piraeus, was a smash hit everywhere when it first came out. Mr. Dassin's love poem to Greece, a land he loved, added another layer to his distinguished career. Not being known for light comedies, this movie strikes the right tone from the start. The director himself decided to play the pivotal role of Homer Thrace, a Brooklyn scholar familiar with Greek culture, but naive in matters of the heart and sex.Ilya, a happy-go-lucky prostitute, is loved by the men working in the port. She has no hangups, something, that in contrast, Homer is full of. After all, he came from a society where sex was for the most part a taboo for the society he came from during the time period where the action takes place. After all, America was not a sexually liberated country. Ilya, on the other hand, was free to share her services openly, as she saw fit without any problem. In a way, the relationship that develops between Homer and Ilya, is a modified version of Pygmalion and Galatea, something that Homer was happy to undertake, even though he knew better not to try.Melina Mercouri dominates the film. She obviously enjoyed getting inside her character as it clearly shows on the screen. She gave a bigger than life reading in what was her best role in the movies. Ms. Mercouri's effortless performance wins the viewer right away because one realizes she is, like Fellini's Cabiria, a genuine soul that gives love without expecting anything in return.Jules Dassin has been criticized by some contributors to IMDb by his take on Homer, but actually, he also gives an appealing account of his scholar. Not being an actor, he understood what he wanted to accomplish with this Brooklyn man that has spent most of his life around books, but not around real life, something he finds living among the earthy people around the Greek port where he spends his vacation. In fact, he kept reminding this viewer of this type of individual that is more at home among books than with real people.The black and white cinematography of Jacques Natteau, enhances the film and the background in which it was filmed. Manos Hatzidakis' delightful music score plays well in the story and it's never out of touch with what the director conceived. Ultimately, the film was another triumph for Jules Dassin, an American original whose body of work speak for itself.