(2 of 2)
¶ Sweden's The Virgin Spring, which already caused something of a scandal in Stockholm, proved to be so honestly made that the audience gasped in terror but made no more attempt than Ingmar Bergman's camera to look away as three goat herds rape a rich farmer's 15-year-old daughter. Bergman's film won the approval of nearly every critic in Cannes.
¶ Greece's Never on Sunday (directed by American Expatriate Jules Dassin) presented a happy, fun-loving prostitute, who always keeps her Sundays free for her own lovers and for her regular visits to productions of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. A prudish but captivated tourist (Dassin) tries to be her American Pygmalion. But the only thing she has in common with the statue Galatea may be nudity. Steadily funny and awash with pagan sex, the comedy won an award for Actress Melina Mercouri, was at its best when all the tarts of Piraeus go on strike against their landlords, drop their mattresses out of bedroom windows onto the heads of American sailors.
