Never on Sunday

Ilya is the happy hooker of Piraeus. Her clients are all shy and handsome, her circle of friends and lovers innocent of jealousy or ill will. Along comes earnest American Homer who tries to reform Ilya's morals and introduce her to Culture. By the end, of course, he's swigging ouzo and smashing crockery with the rest of them. You can see how this might have felt joyful and liberating to audiences coming out of the uptight '50s. Decades on, the relentless Grecian gusto is wearing, and rangy, gravel-voiced Mercouri is a very specialised sort of sex goddess. But in its favour is Hadjidakis' foot-tapping music and Dassin's ploy of shooting this rosiest of fantasies like a gritty documentary.