Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

A sexually frustrated Maria (Mercouri) is traveling through Spain with her husband and a younger woman Claire. Maria's husband is carrying on with Claire and Maria an alcoholic is sexual with every man who chances her way including a murderer in the town they are stuck in.The murderer had committed a crime of passion with which perhaps Maria (Mercouri) identifies. She helps the murderer get out of town and falls in love with him in the process although they are together for perhaps a half hour and exchange three words...This film is arty erotic the final flamenco dance looks like a surrogate drugged out orgasm involving all the actors and extras.60s middle age sexual sequence....lots of these made= Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf... Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.... etc etc... this one was briefer with less story to it.I only watched it to see Mercouri (did any actress have a deeper voice?)Trust me this thing is boring.

There was only one reason why I watched "10:30 PM Summer"--because it was directed by Jules Dassin. Dassin might just be among the most underrated directors of all time--with some amazing classics and hidden gems among his many films. Some of them are pretty famous (such as "Rafifi") but many others are just great films that somehow slipped through the cracks (such as "Thieves Highway" and "Brute Force"). Is "10:30 PM Summer" one of these hidden gems? It certainly is not considered a classic.I noticed on IMDb that the reviews for this film were all over the place and very inconsistent. One declared that the Melina Mercouri was 'the worst actress ever' while another thought she was 'magnificent' and one of the only good things about the film! And, scores ranged from 3 stars to 10! This film boasts a strange international cast with a Brit (Peter Finch), German (Romy Schneider) and Greek (Melina Mercouri) in the leads. The story is set Spain! It's a tale about a bizarre three-some--with a husband and wife and the husband's lover all on some sort of road trip. During the course of the trip, they wander into a town where a double murder just occurred--as a jealous husband shot his wife and her lover. This causes Mercouri's character to further lament her life and she spends most of the film drinking and talking and brooding. This is THE problem with the film. It is VERY talky and has very little in the way of plot. As a result, it felt very dull to me...very dull indeed. A rather lifeless and talky mess--a rare case where Dassin had a misfire.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not unsympathetic against Mercouri, who, in private life, may be or may have been a most charming person. What I want to say is: If that lady isn't hamming it up and acting beyond all tops, then there is no such acting! I'm afraid that lady must have been a hysteric when not drunk in real life, which comes across pretty obvious here. Nice colours throughout the film. Nothing wrong with the framework, in other words. But what is it framing? Maybe just everything was so much more innocent before. Happier times come to life in which we were still learning and everything was still becoming better for the poor and for me this film is therefore worth so much more. Otherwise, it's a bore, if it weren't for the beautiful pictures.

I remember when this film opened in London in 1967. It opened simultaneously with 'Accident' by Joe Losey, and 'Accident' eclipsed this one, as they were considered too similar: mysterious, conveying ineffable unspoken currents between people, a pervasive air of unreality and aetherial suggestiveness of things that could not quite be seen. Of the two, this was the more difficult to describe and comprehend. So 'Accident' ran for a long time, while this closed in a week. It is only now that this neglected masterpiece, doubtless buried for decades because it was 'a commercial failure', has reappeared and I have been able to see it again. The colour has not faded and is as fresh as when it was first released. Jules Dassin surpassed himself with this masterpiece. It is his greatest work. Of course, it all relies heavily upon the genius of his wife, Melina Mercouri. It is the most subtle and understated, and hence probably the most powerful, of all her overwhelmingly brilliant performances. Mercouri was more than just a genius, she was a demented and Dionysiac genius, a genuine Greek maenad, a barefoot raver on the heights of Parnassus, in the best traditions of her culture. She is here well matched by Peter Finch at the top of his form, two years after he did 'The Pumpkin Eater' and 'Girl with Green Eyes', in both of which he had proved he was one of the leading film actors of his generation. Now in this intense film together, they speak the unspoken thoughts of a highly complex marriage and of emotional ties where two people have grown together at the root: but will the root snap? The beautiful and alluring Romy Schneider is part of a strange trio on a journey in Spain, where passion crackles in the air, and the flamenco hands clap, as a murderer aged only 19 comes into the story. I read the original novella by Marguerite Duras and thought it was poorly written and, although evocative, far from being a superior work. But it provided the atmosphere Dassin and Mercouri were looking for, a hothouse of semi-articulate and complex emotions, of raging currents of suppressed passions, a crisis of existential doubts, a veritable torrent or electrical storm, to match the real storm which lashes the stranded travellers in the film. Rarely has the invisible been filmed so successfully. This film was not really filmed in Spain, it was filmed in the ionosphere, and what appear to be buildings and people are really plasmas of charged particles. Dassin rose above reality, to film what lies behind it. These things are sometimes thought and felt, they are never seen. But here he reveals them to the eye, like a cloud parting. This is not mere cinema, it is something higher.