Not quite what we expected — 5 weeks ago
We were surprised to find this as old as 1960, and black-and-white. Also surprised that over half the film was in Greek, with English sub-titles (there are options for three or four other languages in the menu).
Ilya is the main character, brilliantly played by Melina Mercouri who is best known as one of the earliest women in Greek government. Ilya is a lively, fun-loving ‘lady of the night’ who goes swimming each morning to entertain sailors, and chooses her men, depending on whether or not she likes them.
Homer (Jules Dassin) is an American philosopher visiting Greece. We first come across him in a taverna, watching people getting drunk and dancing in typical Greek style. He makes a cultural error, and is embroiled in an angry fight when Ilya – who speaks pretty good English – arrives and manages to negotiate.
Homer is shocked when he discovers Ilya’s profession, but sees her as a representation of all that he considers to be wrong with Greece. So he sets out to educate and enlighten her.. in a way that seemed, at first, to be along the lines of ‘Pygmalion’.
We liked the story and the way the film was made. Ilya is quite a believable person, in a 1960s kind of way, and Homer is a cleverly satirical character, determined that his own country and culture are superior to the one he is visiting.
While there’s no bad language, explicit sexual scenes or frontal nudity below the shoulders, there’s a great deal of implied sex, as well as drunkenness and some low-key violence; besides that, the subject matter alone should really have raised the rating a little higher than PG, in my view!
