Jamais le dimanche

Melina Mercouri takes an often-played role - the 'Whore with a Heart of Gold who Loves Life Despite It All' - and makes it her career-defining movie role, and she is the entire reason to watch the movie. Fiercely independent, sexually progressive, not spending her life trying to find the perfect man and gorgeous, she's a force of life.

Jules Dassin has directed a great movie but he should have hired an actor to play Homer, and not played it himself. He almost ruins all the charm the movie has going for it with his ineffective acting, bad line readings and stupid motivations. A better actor might have found a way around the rough spots but Dassin magnifies them.

Mercouri probably should have won Best Actress that year, but who can beat a Liz Taylor death scare? Plus Simeone Signoret had won Best Actress the year before, and Sophia Loren would win the following year..you don't want to upset icons like Louella Parsons, Frank Sinatra and John Wayne by giving ALL the Oscars to foreigners, do you?? Maybe the fact that she does not die at the end was too much..we all know the odds of longevity for a hooker in a Hollywood movie. Taylor met that criteria, as if she needed to help her own odds after almost dying of pneumonia.

Worth watching for sure. 8/10.

"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.

To a committed hellenophile, this film represents all things that are great about Greece - the food, the music, the people.

First, there is the incomparable music of Manos Hatzidakis, who won an Oscar for the title song.

Then, there is Melina Mercouri, the star of the film, who won at Cannes for her role, as well as getting an Oscar and BAFTA nomination. The Minister of Culture after the fall of the dictatorship in Greece, she was magnificent.

She later married the writer/director of the film, Jules Dassin, who received two Oscar nominations for this film, as well as a BAFTA nomination. Dassin is also well know for the film Rififi.

Watching film is a trip back to the old Greece when the spirit was high and people lived life to the fullest. It is a trip worth taking many times.

Jules Dassin has directed a delightful film starring Melina Mercouri as the happy whore with the heart of gold. As wonderful as Mercouri is, and she is wonderful, Dassin is a disaster, whose performance almost destroys his film. Clearly the low budget with which the film was made prevented his obtaining another English-speaking actor for the main male role.

Dassin, I'm sad to say, is the only actor in the film who has absolutely no personality. He comes across with all the dynamism of a dead log. How lucky we are that Ms Mercouri, who won best actress at the Cannes film festival for her role here, was at the top of her form. Without her, the film would have been forgotten decades ago. As it is, it remains a classic.

No one else in the history of cinema became a star in America playing a sexpot at the age of 40. Melina Mercouri did. "Never on Sunday" is why.

Aided immeasurably by Manos Hadjidakis' unforgettable score (you're probably already humming the theme) and Jules Dassin's story, Mercouri's incredible presence stole the show -- and hearts worldwide.

Dassin is perfect in what would be the "nebbish" role, were he Jewish. The Greeks have, perhaps, 27 words for "nebbish" as they do for "love." Dassin brilliantly inhabits one of them.

Rarely has the energy and life force of a particular time and place been so economically and delightfully captured on film.

There's a reason "Never on Sunday" is a legend and part of every serious film lover's collection. Once you've seen it, you'll know.