Academy Awards, USA 1961

Won

Oscar Best Music, Original Song

Manos Hatzidakis

For the song "Ta paidia tou Peiraia" ("Never on Sunday").

Nominated

Oscar Best Actress in a Leading Role

Melina Mercouri

Best Director

Jules Dassin

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

Jules Dassin

Best Costume Design, Black-and-White

Theoni V. Aldredge

Golden Globes, USA 1961

Nominated

Samuel Goldwyn Award

Greece.

BAFTA Awards 1961

Nominated

BAFTA Film Award Best Film from any Source

Jules Dassin

Greece.

Best Foreign Actress

Melina Mercouri

Greece.

Cannes Film Festival 1960

Won

Best Actress Melina Mercouri

Tied with Jeanne Moreau for Seven Days... Seven Nights (1960).

Nominated

Palme d'Or Jules Dassin

New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1960

2nd place

NYFCC Award Best Actress

Melina Mercouri

Pote tin Kyriaki AKA Never on Sunday

1960 ‧ Drama/Romance ‧ 1h 37m

7.4/10·IMDb

88%·Rotten Tomatoes

Free spirit and prostitute Ilya (Melina Mercouri) lives in a Greek port city. Open and amiable, she makes friends often and easily. She encounters Homer Thrace (Jules Dassin), a vacationing American who is obsessed with ancient Greek culture. Homer feels that modern Greece is a shadow of its former self, and he believes that Ilya is a prime example of contemporary decadence. He makes it his goal to amend Ilya's easygoing ways, but she has stronger principles than Homer expected.

Release date: October 1, 1960 (USA)

Director: Jules Dassin

Music composed by: Manos Hadjidakis

Initial DVD release: July 1, 2003

Screenplay: Jules Dassin

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1014832-never_on_sunday/

Overview

Never on Sunday is a 1960 Greek 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 from Middletown, Connecticut — 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. 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 the 1960s and brought the composer, Manos Hadjidakis, an Academy Award.

https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/43039

Synopsis by Eleanor Mannikka

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?

http://www.allmovie.com/movie/never-on-sunday-v34831