Search - Never on Sunday on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Not For Children Movie Release: 1960 DVD Release: 07/01/2003 Format: DVD - Black and White,Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Audio Tracks: English, Greek, Spanish Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 33 mins Studio: MGM Members Wishing: 9 Genres: Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Comedy of Manners

In this globally acclaimed comedy drama, eccentric, tough, and carefree Ilya (Melina Mercouri) is one of those characters who makes her mark on film history, and who made an internationally known star out of Mercouri. Ilya is a prostitute in the port of Piraeus with a definite sense of social and economic justice. The aptly named Homer (director Jules Dassin, later to marry his star) arrives in Greece, meets the irrepressible Ilya, and decides she needs more of the traditional Greek culture and less of those flamboyant emotions that are not really Greek, you see. So while he tries to play Henry Higgins, Ilya is willing to give up her usual self for two weeks. The question is, what will happen once the two weeks are over, assuming she can get through them? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Melina Mercouri - Illia
Jules Dassin - Homer
Georges Foundas - Tonio
Titos Vandis - Jorgo
Mitsos Liguisos - The Captain

Jules Dassin's Never on Sunday (1960) comes to DVD in a handsome and inexpensive letterboxed edition (1.66-to-1, the European non-anamorphic widescreen ratio) without any special bonuses. This is rather a shame, as Dassin -- an American blacklistee -- was still with us as of 2003 and has shown himself perfectly happy to provide audio commentary for movies of his such as Rififi; to have gotten his observations about the movie of his that must have most galled the people who drove him from America would have been a pleasure for this viewer, and doubled the value of the disc. As it is, the movie has been mastered cleanly and with a good sharp image, and a soundtrack that keeps pumping Manos Hadjidakis's music out to us in rich detail. The black-and-white image looks a lot sharper than this reviewer remembers it from television showings of the late 1960's and early 1970's, and the 93 minute film has been given 16 chapters, which are more than adequate to break down the plot of this joyous comedy. The disc comes with a basic Greek/English audio track (the Greek translated in yellow-tinted subtitles), with an optional Spanish mono track and English captions and French and Spanish subtitles. The disc opens automatically to a simple two-layer menu with the "play" option in the default position. The only visual bonus material is the original trailer, which makes the movie seem a bit racier than it actually is, and also demonstrates how the difficult subject matter of its plot had to be sold at the time, which isn't all that different from the way it would be sold today. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide