Never on Sunday

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Never on Sunday
Directed by	Jules Dassin
Written by	Jules Dassin
Starring	Melina Mercouri Jules Dassin George Foundas
Release date(s)	October 1, 1960
Running time	91 min.
Language	English/Greek/Russian
IMDb profile

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

Never on Sunday (Greek: Ποτέ Την Κυριακή, "Pote Tin Kyriaki") is a 1960 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 — a classical scholar enamored with all things Greek. Ilya is a character close to the "hooker with a heart of gold" cliché. 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, but in this case, the male character is not just trying to create, or shape, a mate that he can then consider suitable for him, he is also a cultural colonialist/tourist. Even though he only has book knowledge about Greece (ancient Greece, that is), and speaks no Greek, he purports to teach a native Greek, about who Greeks are. The idealistic Homer is met at every turn by a practical and wise Ilya, and when he fails to obtain the results he desired, he even violates the same morals and high standards that he so earnestly preached about. He is, in other words, the stereotypical missionary.

While the film was controversial in its own time due to its sexual content, it both amuses and irritates Greeks; they frequently encounter foreigners whose only knowledge of Greece comes from Never on Sunday.

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 1960s and brought Manos Hadjidakis, the composer, an Academy Award.

The movie was written and directed by Dassin.

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 and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen.