Ilya in her natural environment: surrounded by men.
Never on Sunday is a 1960 film from Greece directed by Jules Dassin.
Despite being a Greek production, something like 2/3 of the film is in English. Jules Dassin's wife Melina Mercouri plays Ilya, a happy-go-lucky prostitute in the port city of Piraeus. She's a cheerful, energetic woman who is perfectly happy running out to the dock to service a whole ship's worth of American sailors and who, when she isn't horizontal with a client, is throwing weekend parties for her friends or dancing in the local restaurant.
Enter Homer Thrace (played by Jules Dassin), an American writer who is in Piraeus on a vague mission to capture "the glory that was Greece
". Homer, a classicist who is intimately familiar with ancient Greek drama and the Greek philosophers, decides that Ilya is the personification of all the Greek virtues and that he, the American know-it-all, will educate her and reform her and get her to stop hooking. The only problem is, Ilya likes hooking.
There is another plot thread focusing on all the other whores of Piraeus, who, unlike Ilya the free agent, are tightly controlled by a gangster called "No-face". No-face does not like Ilya being an example of a prostitute who controls her own fate.
Compare 1960 Greek film The Red Lanterns, also about a prostitute and also set in Piraeus.
Tropes:
- As You Know: As a nearly naked Ilya frolics in the bay with the sailors, a boat pulls in. A passenger watching the folks in the water says "Where is the American, the intellectual, Mr. Thrace? He should see this!"
- Binocular Shot: Ilya sees a U.S. Navy ship full of Horny Sailors pulling in. She breaks out some binoculars and sees several ships pulling in, which means the hookers of Piraeus are going to be busy for a few days.
- Book Ends: At the beginning of the movie Homer arrives on a ship looking to learn about Greeks and, as events show, boss them around. The film ends with Homer leaving on a ship after learning some lessons about cultural imperialism (and not getting Ilya).
- Call-Back: In the opening scene Ilya strips to her underwear to dive into the bay. Later, after Homer has been campaigning to make her more a proper lady and less slutty, she puts on a demure one-piece bathing suit. Capt. Armathis watches this and says sarcastically, "And Ilya ate of the apple of knowledge and knew shame."
- Comforting Comforter: Homer may be bossy and controlling but he does care about Ilya, as shown when he pulls a blanket over her after finding her in bed.
- Dance Line: After Ilya decisively rejects Homer and his busybody ways, she winds up in a dance line with all the men in the Local Hangout, while the house band enthusiastically plays bazouki accompaniment. It's something of a defiant moment towards Homer, who is looking on glumly, although she doesn't bear any grudges.
- Establishing Character Moment: In her first scene Ilya runs onto the pier, stripping down to bra and panties as she goes, and dives into the water. She then beckons all the sailors working on ships to join her, and they do.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: A long sequence deals with how Ilya loves ancient Greek tragedies, but, because she is such a happy person, ignores the plots and insists that they all have happy endings. She specifically mentions Oedipus Rex and says "I never saw such a good son who loves so much his mother." Oedipus Rex of course involves Oedipus having Surprise Incest with his mother, something that couldn't be said out loud in a 1960 movie, even in Europe.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Ilya, a kind and friendly person who enjoys her work.
- Horny Sailors: A Running Gag: Two sailors haggle over Ilya's price in the cafe. Two more sailors leave disappointed after coming to Ilya's apartment and finding it "closed" (she's doing self-improvement with Homer). Later a U.S. Navy ship pulls in and all the hookers in town rush out to meet it.
- How Do You Say: Many of the Greek locals are surprisingly fluent in English, probably justified by Piraeus being a port city. As a man sings and dances at the Local Hangout, Homer wonders why. Ilya answers "It makes him feel better in his, how do you say...", and as Captain Armathis walks in he supplies the English word "soul".
- Leg Focus: The other hookers of Piraeus are introduced with a closeup of their legs as four of them march, in a line, down to the docks to look for Ilya.
- Local Hangout: The one particular cafe where everyone hangs out that is Greek as Greek can be, with singing and dancing and bazouki music and people drinking ouzo (they're horrified when Homer orders coffee). There's even a Running Gag in which people smash their ouzo glasses and incur 5 drachma charges.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: A young American sailor who bought Ilya's services gets intimidated, and finds that he cannot get it up. He apologizes sheepishly. Ilya rallies to the challenge, playing some mood music and sharing a cigarette and getting the young man going.
- Love Triangle: Between Homer the American busybody, Tonio the lustful sailor, and Ilya. Homer does not want to admit this, pretending that his interest in Ilya is purely selfless, and not confessing until the end. A joyful Tonio says "Too late!" as he carries Ilya away.
- Naïve Newcomer: Tonio is an Italian who is new to Piraeus. This provides an opportunity for someone to explain to him and to the audience that Ilya is a cheerful hooker.
- Shower Scene: A male example with ruggedly handsome Tonio, who is showering after sex with Ilya.
- Significant Name: Ironically it's the one non-Greek character in the movie, the American, who gets the name "Homer Thrace". "Homer" is the poet traditionally regarded as the writer of the Iliad and Odyssey, while "Thrace" is that corner of southeast Europe bordering the Turkish Straits, an area now split between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey.note
- Sinister Shades: The local gangster/pimp is called "No-Face" because of the sinister sunglasses that he never takes off. Subverted in that he isn't really all that sinister; he's willing to exploit the girls but he agrees to lower their rents after they go on strike.
- Smart People Play Chess: Notably, part of Homer's campaign to educate Ilya involves a chess set being placed in her apartment.
- Smoking Is Glamorous: Mixed with a variation of Erotic Eating. A young man has engaged Ilya's services but gets intimidated and can't get it up. She puts a cigarette in her mouth, lights it, and then puts the cigarette in his mouth. It works.
- Time-Passes Montage: After Ilya finally agrees to Homer's two-week campaign to improve and educate her, this is shown with a montage. A piano is winched in, she gets a shelf full of intellectual books, she gets a globe to learn geography, and her photo of a Greek soccer team is replaced by a Picasso print.
- Toplessness from the Back
- Ilya in one scene with an American sailor who's bought her for the evening.
- The film pushes 1960 movie censorship even further in a scene with Ilya and Tonio, where Ilya, who has just showered, wears nothing above the waist but a bath towel carefully situated to cover her breasts.
- "Ugly American" Stereotype: Homer. He's not the ugly American sort that gets drunk in a bar or sexually exploits local women or screams at people for not speaking English. Instead he's a more subtle example in that he, being an American visiting a Greek city, presumes to lecture all the locals on how their culture has declined since Alexander and how they should really act more like Americans. Most of this is focused on Ilya as Homer dogs her footsteps and insists that she really should not enjoy being a whore so much and that he can "save" her, but he also causes one of the bazouki players to have a moral crisis when Homer insists that he can't be a musician because he doesn't read music. Homer gets over himself in the last scene, pounding shots of ouzo and shattering the glasses like the locals, but it's too late to win Ilya.
- Unproblematic Prostitution: Ilya is perfectly happy being a prostitute, and gets positively gleeful when an American battleship glides into port. Homer, the guy who wants her to stop hooking, is portrayed as a prudish killjoy. She does make it clear that she reserves the right to refuse any customer she doesn't like.
