Word: mercouri
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Phaedra proves a number of things: that Jules Dassin knows how to direct a movie; that antique Greek tragedy can be done as modern cinema brilliantly and meaningfully; that Melina Mercouri is as achingly believable as a tragedienne as she was believably zany as a comedienne (in Never on Sunday); and that Tony Perkins had better go back to making thrillers for Hitchcock...
Taking a classic myth that had been dramatized already by Euripides, Seneca and Racine, Dassin and Margerita Liberaki have fashioned a new Phaedra that is honest, beautiful and quite terrifying. Mercouri, as Phaedra, is the second wife of an Onassis-like ship tycoon, played with bouncy virility by Raf Vallone. Tony Perkins, Vallone's son by his first marriage, is bumming around London, dabbling in paint and nursing a grudge against both father and stepmother...
...will have no hero: it is a vast collection of vignettes following the war from 1942 to a confrontation between a U.S. soldier and a Russian soldier in late 1945. Its stars-including Eli Wallach, George Hamilton, Peter Sellers, Vincent (Ben Casey) Edwards, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Melina Mercouri-are so numerous that The Victors may turn into The Second Longest Day. But there is no cause for alarm in the lofty moral tones of Carl Foreman's third inaugural. Foreman, by his own definition, is just a born failure. The Victors should be just as tremendous...
Baffled by the anxiety of a U.S. newsman to learn her vibrant statistics. Cinemactress Melina (Never on Sunday) Mercouri marveled: "In Greece we don't care if a woman is small or tall or how she is built. We judge her on her charm, tone of voice, and her capacity to listen to a man well. I never give anyone my measurements. I don't know them, so how could I? I could find out what they are. but I really don't see what the argument is about...
UNIVERSITY: NEVER ON SUNDAY, supposedly a shocking and corrupting movie by versatile Greek producer-director Jules Dassin ("Rififi"), is at least funny, and consistently so. It has an interesting outlook, and Melina Mercouri too--who is a major part of the outlook. Starts Wednesday: COME SEPTEMBER, a comedy of questionable value starring Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, Sandra Dee and (inevitably) Bobby Darin. The story of attempted seduction on the Riviera, it is inconsistently funny, but it has its moments...