Chased out of Hollywood by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950, Jules Dassin was one of the few victims of the Black List to make good overseas. As with this sprightly, savvy, if joyfully stereotypical comedy shot in black-and-white on a shoestring in Greece and featuring a showstopping turn by his wife, Melina Mercouri. She plays Ilya, a free-spirited streetwalker in the seaport of Piraieus whom Homer Thrace (Dassin, a fiery nebbish), a Grecophile (though in typical American fashion he loves the country but doesn’t speak the language) tourist in search of " truth, " mistakes for a personification of Greece itself. Seeing her as symbolic of a civilization fallen from Aristotelean heights to Epicurean decadence, he sets out to transform her into his own image of the Greek ideal ( " Remember Pygmalion, " is one observer’s unheeded warning). That involves collusion with the sinister Mr. No Face, a local capitalist set on cornering the real-estate and prostitution market, and rivalry with Tonio (George Foundas), a prolish dockworker with a less platonic plan for making Ilya an honest woman. Bouzouki music (including the irresistible Manos Hadjidakis title tune), drunken dancing, and shattered crockery fill the gaps in this dialectic, but Mercouri’s distaff Zorba transcends both plot and politics.