Νo one could have imagined that the formal reception to mark the screening of the movie “Never on Sunday” at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960 would turn into a joyous Greek party. And yet, on that warm spring evening, that’s exactly what happened, as dozens of festival guests danced until dawn around Jules Dassin’s leading lady, Melina Mercouri, to the music of Manos Hadjidakis, accompanied by George Zampetas on the bouzouki.
The following year, Hadjidakis went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song for the film’s rousing theme tune “Ta Pedia tou Pirea.” Nana Mouskouri was already singing it all over Europe, while acclaimed jazz musicians Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie and celebrated female singers such as Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt would help make the English version, “Never on Sunday,” one of the most frequently-covered songs of the 20th century. Above all, though, the movie served to make Greece itself fashionable, cementing the country’s reputation as the proud homeland of Mediterranean bonhomie and optimism.
A few years later, in 1964, on a sun-drenched beach in that same charmed nation, Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates danced to the music of another Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis, in a stand-out scene from another award-winning film, “Zorba the Greek,” directed by Michael Cacoyannis. From Connie Francis and Dalida to the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Maurice Béjart, countless artists and ensembles reinterpreted the composition as everything from a playful ditty to an orchestral work and ballet. Greek music had become famous in its most authentic form, sustained by the life-giving force of folk tradition.
However, even among those who have hummed the tune of “Never on Sunday” or danced syrtaki to the tune of “Zorba the Greek,” very few are aware that Hadjidakis and Theodorakis worked on numerous international scores that drew far less on Greek tradition.
