“All at once a further wonder came
to increase our well-being: a cool breath of wind.
This is one of the seldom-failing blessings
of midsummer in the Peloponnese.”
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese
Viewing
Never on Sunday
Jules Dassin
Never on Sunday is Jules Dassin’s love letter to Greece. Homer Thrace (Jules Dassin himself) is an American scholar and self-confessed amateur philosopher who comes to the port of Piraeus to find out the truth: Why Greece, the cradle of civilisation and culture, has given in to a life of pleasure. From that very premise, finding out the truth, he sets about improving Ilya (Melina Mercouri), a beautiful, graceful and intelligent, life-loving prostitute he is fond of, to him the personification of Greece herself. The truth is a little different than his perception of life, and than the American way of thinking and seeing the world.
Moralising and redeeming messages are often the weakness of so many good American films. And the fact that Jules Dassin made Rififi in France, having been blacklisted in Hollywood because of his pre-war communist affiliations, is part of what makes Rififi the best noir. As David Cairns wrote in his essay, I’m a Crook at Heart, Rififi confirmed “that outside Hollywood and the constraints of the Production Code, it was unnecessary to prettify the ugly stories with socially redeeming messages and moralising”.
After making Rififi (1955) in France and winning best director at Cannes, Dassin took up residence and filmmaking in Greece. He shot Never on Sunday in Piraeus, in 1960, and just as he had done with Rififi, The Naked City and Night and the City, he revealed the seaport of Piraeus not only to the Greeks, but to the whole world. The whole atmosphere is authentically Greek, the music is traditional bouzouki music and the crew and cast are almost entirely Greek.
But it is Melina Mercouri that is the best part of the film. With her raspy voice, daring look in the eye, disarming candour and galloping naturalness, she has a magnetic presence. Every man in Piraeus adores Ilya, but she is the one who chooses her partners. She is independent, lives in her own apartment, not sharing accommodation like the other women in her profession, who have to pay an exorbitant rent for it. Forty at the time, Mercouri radiates the kind of beauty and wisdom that only come with maturity and “her charisma and likability elevate her beyond the archetypal figure of the whore with a heart of gold,” as Peter Shelley states in the book Jules Dassin: The Life and Films. The author further reports how Mercouri researched the part of Ilya in Notaras Street, the red-light district of Piraeus: “The girls received us graciously and in the most bourgeois manner. There was tea, little cakes, and polite conversation. They liked me. [In the film] I became the mascot of the whores of the world. I received letters from everywhere thanking me for portraying their profession with dignity.” She is wonderful in the role and one of the finest scenes is when Ilya, alone in the room, sings the theme song of the film, her acting talent and Dassin’s directing sensibility and skill beautifully coming together.
Unrelated, 2007
Joanna Hogg
There are many films that I associate with summer, but Joanna Hogg’s debut feature Unrelated is a truly special one. An extended English family are joined by a friend at their rented house in Italy for a summer holiday. People sunbathe, have casual meals on the steps of a piazzeta, swim at night, drive around in the Tuscan countryside. You can feel the unhurried pace of summer, the time when people want to escape their daily lives, when they want to believe that anything is allowed, when they wish they can make up for lost opportunities, when they only think about their day, when they want to just be. Eventually however, they all realise, each in his or her own way, that life doesn’t take a detour during summer, although we all might be lead to think that at one point or another. It’s a film that bottles up the beauty, the reality and the bittersweetness of summer in a way few others ever have. I loved how the camera focused on Anna (Kathryn Worth) in many scenes, while the other characters carried on in the background and we only get to hear their voices for a while – such a subtle and effective glimpse into the emotional state of the character without any verbose explanation.
Jurassic Park, 1993
Steven Spielberg
It remains my ten-year-old son’s favourite film. So we watch it every summer. Naturally, we had to go to see the latest Jurassic World Rebirth and, transporter by Alexandre Desplat’s extraordinary score, it once again made us realise what gem of a classic the original film is and return to it once more.
Do the Right Thing, 1989
Spike Lee
“Today’s temperature’s gonna rise up over 100 degrees, so there’s a Jheri curl alert! That’s right, Jheri curl alert. If you have a Jheri curl, stay in the house or you’ll end up with a permanent black helmet on your head fuh-eva!” These lines belong to Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) in Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee’s incendiary film shot in bright colours and set on the hottest day of the summer in Brooklyn, NYC, and to the assaulting beats of hip-hop, when hip-hop had something to say. As the day gets hotter, simmering racial tensions erupt in this fiercely independent and unapologetic film that remains more relevant than the ones made today.
Reading
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese. A travel writing all his own, mysterious and observant, tender and experienced, a fascinating journey of a true traveller who goes deep into the history, culture and wilderness of the Mani, at the heart of Europe’s southernmost promontory. And you feel you get to start to know its people, just as they are.
Listening
The radio (on a road trip from Athens to the Peloponnese): Radio Zeppelin 106.7
The soundtrack: The “Birdman” score performed live by composer Antonio Sanchez as the audience is watching the film. Les Nuits de Fourvière, Lyon, France, 20th of July, 2025.
The album: Van Morison, Moondance
Making
In the exploding heat of Athens in summertime (even in June, it has become tricky), nothing cools you off better than an iced herbal tea you are offered by the most thoughtful staff when you enter the Naxos Apothecary. An oasis of calmness that has the most wonderful hand creams and teas to buy, as well as simply yet exquisitely packaged face and body products that are named after Naxian villages, the root of the brand. Candles and summery scented lip balms (yoghurt, mulberry, grapes, wild rose) make for the perfect treat to bring back home or gift to family and friends.
Exploring
The Mani peninsula. The expanding sky, the strident noise of cicadas coming out of the olive trees all day long from daybreak to sundown, snaking through the hills to the most perfect beach behind a forest of reeds which I am intentionally keeping to myself, green transparent water with caiques in sight, winding hillside roads lined with oleanders, unruffled cliffs, the quaint beauty of the village of Kardamyli, the Amalfi Coast vibe of Limeni, with its stone houses perched on the edge of the coast, a drive at golden hour on the coastline with the sea rarely out of sight, the scarce tourists, the hospitality of the locals – “Many things in Greece have remained unchanged since the time of the Odyssey and perhaps the most striking of these is the hospitality shown to strangers; the more remote and mountainous the region, the less this has altered.” (Patrick Leigh Fermor) – and their effortless ability to turn meals into feasts, the food at Elies under the olive trees, the daily sight of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s house and imagining all the stories that went on in there, fictional and real. Far from the madding crowds of the islands, the sense of place is strong and immediate. It’s summer freedom. It’s like a beloved familiar and remote place you return to year after year, harking back to a time when life felt simpler. Because nothing felt more rewarding in the midday glare of the summer sun than returning to an exquisite, little family-run hotel that offered all the intimacy, comfort and tranquility of a family summer house. Hosts become friends and when you leave they surprise you one more time, with farewell hand-crafted and hand-grown gifts, an act of kindness that I am sure goes back to memorial times, but also a token of a memorable holiday.
On an end note
Trust the locals. It’s where you get the best recommendations for the lesser known spots, which are usually the most beautiful ones, too. Nothing beats the advice you get when you invest your interest in an honest and heartfelt conversation with the locals. It can be the owner or concierge of your hotel, the waiter at the restaurant, the artist in the seaside village, the cherries vendor on the side of the road, or the shop assistant of an artifacts store in Athens where you get to exchange impressions about Paul Thomas Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos (for more talk about the Greek filmmaker, you can check out my interview with the director’s close collaborator Vasilis Marmatakis). Rounding-up this newsletter on the subject of cinema, I will add that catching a film at one of Athens’ many open-air cinemas is the best way I could ever think of for ending a summer day, heat wave permitting.
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Ruthie’s Table 4 with Ruth Rogers. Fashion Neurosis, with Bella Freud. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.
“The late afternoon sun softened everything and,
combined with the relief of escape from the
confinement of the mountains, it charged the air
with a feeling of well-being and holiday.”
Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese
