POTE TIN KYRIAKI (Never On Sunday,1959) *** It's better to be a prostitute than to become immersed in materialism, because the latter is a form of homogenized prostitution in which only the interesting bits have been refined beyond recognition. Something like that, Jules Dassin writes in such an open and beautiful manner that you can not only plug in your own metaphors, but mix them without shame. Of course some of it is reasonably objective, including the allusions to the effects and hypocrisy of post-war American foreign policy. It's not just what the deals are, he says, it's who you cut the deals with. All of which can be easily avoided by any reticent viewer satisfied to read it all as a silly and simple tale about a hooker and writer. Melina Mercouri is possessed of a chaotic and severe grace, just the sort of thing to bring forth demands from the herd for homogenization. Her insights into Medea is the type of subjectivity that render Kierkegaard passionate, and she dances like an elegant angel in a room full of stolen cotton candy. Dassin directs in an unobtrusive manner, he's not shooting for sensible-it just turns out that way-but the lingering shot on the performance of the tragedy is too good to let go. It's nice to be entertaining, it's great to be insightful, it's incompatible to be inconspicuous, and it's sinful to be reserved when you're holding a hand like this one. Analysis is, then, invariably misstated, unavailable, and inappropriate. So you have to like to try one.
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