The truth will free him

 The movie

Never on Sunday is a 1960 Greek romantic comedy, written and directed by Jules Dassin. The cast includes Jules Dassin, Melina Mercouri, Giorgos Foundas and Titos Vandis.

The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song (Manos Hadjidakis for “Never on Sunday”), which became a hit.

Never on Sunday was also nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Best Costume Design, Best Director and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay as Written Directly for the Screen.

Mercouri won the award for Best Actress at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.

The story takes place at the Piraeus port (near Athens, Greece). Illya (played by Mercouri) is a self-employed free-spirited prostitute. She entertains several preferred “clients” at receptions on Sundays, when she has the day off from her “business”.

Among the clients are:

• Jorgo (played by Vandis), a man who boasts that he sleeps only with prostitutes, and
• Tonio (played by Foundas), a half-Italian worker, who becomes infatuated with Illya and tries to win her exclusively for himself.

One day Illya meets Homer Thrace (played by Dassin). He is an American classical scholar and passionate Philhellene. After some time, Homer is starting to believe that Illya personifies how Greek culture decayed due to living by Stoic and Epicurean philosophies.

Seeing himself as a Pygmalion, he tries to reform the prostitute to a cultivated and moral person.

After some adventurous and romantic scenes, it is revealed that Homer was in love with Illya. Yet he restrained himself because of his belief that for him she was a symbol. In contrast Tonio replies that Illya is not a symbol but a woman.

Eventually, Homer boards a ship back to the US.

The scene

Homer is in the local bar, where all the clients of Illya are usually gathered to drink, listen to bouzouki music and dance.

He tells to Illya that he knows why Jorgo goes only with prostitutes. He says that maybe it would be good for Jorgo to learn the truth, which will undoubtedly free him. Then Illya invites Jorgo to “listen to the truth”. What follows is really hilarious.

It is notable that Mercouri and Vandis had a great success in Broadway with an adaptation of the film to a play with the title “Illya Darling”.

Never on Sunday certainly deserves a leading place in any cinephile library.