Daily Archives: January 17, 2017

Never on Sunday (Pote tin Kyriaki)
Directed by Jules Dassin
Written by Jules Dassin
1960/Greece/USA
Lopert Pictures Corporation/Melinafilm
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime

[box] Homer: Because you are the whole world. Beautiful and corrupt.[/box]

Only a doting husband could create a hooker this happy.

American Homer Thrall (Jules Dassin) is an amateur philosopher in thrall to Ancient Greece.  He visits the modern equivalent to discover how his idealized past could have fallen so far.  When he gets there, he finds his project encapsulated in the person of independent, fiery prostitute Ilya (Melina Mercouri).  Although Ilya is contented and even joyous in her profession, Homer takes it upon himself to attempt to “educate” and “save” her.

At the same time, there are two other men who are trying to reform Ilya.  They are her Italian client and lover Tonio, who wants her all to himself, and “No Face”, who runs a stable of prostitutes that are encouraged in rebellion by Ilya’s independence.  All these men might just as well try to tame Mother Nature.

The best parts of this movie are the exuberant Greek music and dance and the unrestrained performance by Mercouri.  The worst is Dassin’s casting of himself in the male lead.  He really cannot act.  His performance aside, the movie is thoroughly entertaining.

Never on Sunday won the Oscar for Best Music, Originial Song for its title tune.  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Actress; Best Director; Best Writing, Story and Strcreenplay – Written Directly for the Screen; and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White.

Trailer

Oscar Wilde
Directed by Gregory Ratoff
Written by Jo Eisenger based on works by Frank Harris and a play by Leslie Stokes and Sewell Stokes
1960/UK
Vantage Films
First viewing/YouTube

Yet each man kills the thing he loves/ By each let this be heard/ Some do it with a bitter look/ Some with a flattering word/ The coward does it with a kiss/ The brave man with a sword” ― Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad Of Reading Gaol”

This film makes a very sad story remarkably dull.  Fortunately, we get a chance to watch Robert Morley and Ralph Richardson act – always a good thing.

This is the true story of the downfall of the late Victorian poet, playwright and bon vivant (Morley).  It begins with the meeting of the 40-something Wilde and the 20-something Oxford student Lord Alfred Douglas who pursued him.  The relationship developed into a love affair and infuriated Douglas’s father, the Marquis of Queensbury.  In an effort to end it, the father writes Wilde a note accusing him of “posing as a sodomite”.

Douglas, who here is basically portrayed as the villain of the piece, has long had a very strained relationship with his father.  He encourages Wilde to sue the Marquis for libel.  The Marquis’s defense is that the accusation was true.  Through the able and withering defense of the Marquis’s attorney (Richardson), it becomes clear that the Marquis has the evidence to amply prove Wilde’s many liaisons with much younger men.  At Douglas’s urging, Wilde pursues his case for far too long.  By the time he throws in the towel, Wilde’s arrest for homosexuality, a crime at the time, is inevitable.

This should not be confused with the same year’s The Trials of Oscar Wilde starring Peter Finch, which I have not yet seen.  This one lacks any real depth to the characterizations and, for most of its running time, appears to be a blow-by-blow enactment of the trial transcript.  I could happily watch Richardson enact the telephone directory so I was not entirely displeased.

No clip or trailer so some music from the film