Never on Sunday

This article is about the 1960 film. For other uses, see Never on Sunday (disambiguation).

Never on Sunday
Directed by	Jules Dassin
Written by	Jules Dassin
Starring	Melina Mercouri Jules Dassin Giorgos Fountas
Editing by	Roger Dwyre
Distributed by	Lopert Pictures Corporation (1960, original) MGM (2003, DVD)
Release date(s)	1 October 1960 (1960-10-01)
Running time	91 minutes
Country	Greece United States
Language	English Greek Russian

Never on Sunday (Greek: Ποτέ Την Κυριακή, translit. Pote Tin Kyriaki) is a 1960 Greek black-and-white film which tells the story of Ilya, a prostitute who lives in the port of Piraeus in Greece, and Homer, an American tourist from Middletown, Connecticut — a classical scholar enamored with all things Greek. Ilya is a character close to the "hooker with a heart of gold" cliché.^{[citation needed]} Homer feels Ilya's life style typifies the degradation of Greek classical culture and attempts to steer her onto the path of morality. It constitutes a variation of the Pygmalion story.

The film stars Melina Mercouri and Jules Dassin, and it gently submerges the viewer into Greek culture, including dance, music, and language (through the use of subtitles). The signature song and the bouzouki theme of the movie became hits of the 1960s and brought the composer, Manos Hadjidakis, an Academy Award.

It won the Academy Award for Best Song (Manos Hadjidakis for "Never on Sunday"). It was nominated for the Academy Awards for, respectively, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Melina Mercouri), Best Costume Design, Black-and-White, Best Director (Jules Dassin) and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay as Written Directly for the Screen (Dassin). Mercouri won the award for Best Actress at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.^[1]

Cast

• Melina Mercouri as Ilya
• Jules Dassin as Homer Thrace
• Giorgos Fountas as Tonio
• Titos Vandis as Jorgo
• Mitsos Ligizos as The Captain (as Mitsos Lygizos)
• Despo Diamantidou as Despo
• Dimos Starenios as Poubelle
• Dimitris Papamichael as A Sailor (as Dimitri Papamichael)
• Alexis Solomos as Noface
• Thanassis Veggos as (as Thanassis Veggos)
• Faidon Georgitsis as Sailor
• Nikos Fermas as Waiter

Trivia

Ilya meets with two British sailors from the HMS MANCHESTER, the younger one offers less money, however, he appeals to Ilya. There was no HMS Manchester in the Royal Navy in 1960.

The two Soviet sailors arrive when Homer has Ilya out of her room. The name of the Russian ship is on the sailors' caps in the Cyrillic alphabet.

When the American fleet arrives, the destroyer, USS Douglas H. Fox (DD-779), is shown from stock footage and recognizable by the large numbers 779 painted on her bow section.

DVD

Never on Sunday was released in a Region 1 DVD by MGM Home Video on July 1, 2003.

References

1. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Never on Sunday". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/3308/year/1960.html. Retrieved 2009-02-18. 

External links

• Pote tin Kyriaki at the Internet Movie Database