Never on Sunday
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Movie Reviews of Never on Sunday
Movie Review: "The Last Greek Goddess",
Summary: 4 Stars
Melina Mercouri, "The Last Greek Goddess", stars in the comedy "Never on Sunday"(1960) directed/written by Jules Dassin. She plays Illia, the most sensuous and radiant "lady of the night" in the seaport Pyres where every man adores her and she is the one who chooses her partners. Mercouri was 40 years old when she played Illia but she did not hide a single day of her age and she was gorgeous, full of the inner fire and absolutely irresistible. When the new Pygmalion, the intellectual American named Homer (of course) sails into the town and meets Illia, he decides that his search for meaning of life would end in Pyres if he would reform Illia and make her change her way of life. With all his intellect and education he couldn't understand a very simple truth about Illia - only true love might change her. Homer played by director/writer Jules Dassin is the weakest part of this mostly charming comedy. I agree with one of the IMDb commenters who said that "Jules Dassin has directed a great movie but he should have hired an actor to play Homer, and not played it himself... A better actor might have found a way around the rough spots but Dassin magnifies them." I guess that in real life Dassin was much more charming that in the film because he and Mercouri were married in 1966 and stayed married until her death in 1994.
Movie Review: the hidden persuaders
Summary: 3 Stars
I was puzzled when I saw this movie soon after it came out. It seemed straight-forward: a professor wanted to improve the education and cultural level of a prostitute. But why did he choose such dismal, depressing material? Some of the most somber music of Bach, the Greek tragedians. Why not some of the many happy classical pieces, many of them written by Bach? Why not Aristophanes? Or Sappho?
The mystery begins to dissolve when you put together certain information: The filmmaker, Jules Dassin, was an American communist who was blacklisted and, like many of his comrades, left the country to make films abroad. If this movie is seen as the first step in the Gramsci program to win by undermining Western culture, it makes sense. Of course, like other such efforts it had to be sugar-coated to be swallowed. Ilya, representing the people, is actually being corrupted by being introduced to Western culture. We root for her to cast it off and return to her old self. And the place chosen, of course, is Greece, the birthplace of Western culture.
Did it work? Probably not. Everyone (including me) delighted in the theme song and enjoyed seeing the carefree, happy-go-lucky Ilya defying conventional mores. And as for Bach, well, they never liked Bach anyway.
Still, it was a first blow. But it was far from the last. A more militant effort was made in the late sixties, but it was a dismal failure. During the seventies, the movement played dead and cast around for another strategy. By the early eighties the new approach was in full swing: remain covert, don't mention a movement, and undermine Western culture by gaining control of the schools and colleges. (If you want to know the blow-by-blow, you won't find it in any movie. You'll have to read a book, The Rape of Alma Mater. Many nonfiction books can give you details also, those by liberals being The Shadow University, The New Thought Police, and Who Stole Feminism?)
The music is still good, and the main character Ilya still defies prudery, and people will still enjoy both without being persuaded of the evils of Western culture.
Movie Review: Grating!
Summary: 2 Stars
I must repeat what some of the reviewers have said about this film. It is most unfortunate that a talented director Jules Dassin, Hollywood black list runaway, director of a very influential heist flick, Rififfi, should cast himself as the goofy American that wants to educate his real life wife, Melina Mercouri. He is awkward in the role.
Unfortunately, this saucy prostitute that Melina plays started to grate on me early on. My parents talked of this movie when I was young and they thought it sexy in a 1950's way. There's not much actual skin, as we know R rated films today. There's tight fitting, long skirts that make the chunky babes look especially pear shaped. There's a lot of haughty drinking of the ouzo and the Zorba dancing, but really, the premise of Ancient Greece corrupted in the symbol of this smiling whore to be reformed, Greece to be restored to greatness are so fuzzy, Dassin and Mercouri must have cooked it up in the Mediteranean sun. Two bottles of ouzo and the investors fell in. It just doesn't ring true.