a.k.a. SALÒ o le 120 giornate di sodoma / Pasolini’s 120 Days of Sodom
company: United Artists
year: 1975
runtime: 116′
country: Italy
director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
cast: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi,
Umberto P. Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti,
Caterina Boratto, Elsa De Giorgi,
Helene Surgere, Sonia Saviange
writers: Pier Paolo Passolini,
Sergio Citti and Pupi Avati
cinematographer: Torino Delli Colli
music: Ennio Morricone
Order this film from Amazon.com
The great Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final film, which would not premiere until well after the director himself had been murdered under circumstances still being investigated today, seems as though it were ready made for courting controversy. Deeply political and disquietingly perverse, the film transposes Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom [written while he was imprisoned in the Bastille] upon a short-lived fascist Republic that existed in Italy towards the end of the second World War. The narrative is a graphic rebellion against what Pasolini saw as a new fascism in his own time – the global consumerism the director felt was destroying Italian society before his very eyes. SALÒ concerns the commodification of the body, the human capacity to conform, and the terrible consequences of un-restricted power. It’s one of the only genuinely horrifying films I’ve ever seen.
Four libertines residing in Mussolini’s fascist Republic of Salò arrange for the kidnapping of eighteen young men and women, children of presumed enemies of the state. The group is relocated to an expansive villa, where the four libertines read them a set of rules [no heterosexual intercourse, no religious acts, and so on] before subjecting them to endless days of debasing humiliations and all manner of torture. The youths are made to behave as dogs, eat food laced with nails, and sate even the most bizarre of their hosts’ sexual desires. At the end of their stay, a list of those who have broken the masters’ rules is presented, and those on it executed in a grandiose fashion.
The narrative of SALÒ owes its structure more to Dante than to Sade, with its torments separated into four distinct circles: the Antechamber of Hell, Circle of Obsessions, Circle of Shit, and Circle of Blood. Each circle has its own host – one of three aged madames, who tell stories of their bizarre sexual exploits in order to excite and inspire the libertines and their ‘guests’. The libertines themselves, constantly joking amongst themselves and performing their various sadistic acts with ludicrous glee, might well have been comic were their actions not so vile.
The sadism on display, while often shockingly graphic, is kept at a distance and frequently from the point of view of the libertines, who often distance themselves from the depravity. This leaves those watching with no real connection to the victims, only a feeling of powerlessness and complicity for what is unfolding on screen. Pasolini makes audience complicity implicit in the final act, by forcing us to watch the execution of the rule-breakers through the distant binoculars of the libertines. The director here cuts away before anything overtly graphic occurs, ‘cheating’ the audience of the ‘money shot’ they’re expecting and leaving us wondering what in our nature would ever allow us to want more than what he presents. The horror of SALÒ is in the realization that we may not be nearly so civilized or humane as we let on.
It’s a testament to the considerable artistic talent involved in the production of SALÒ that it is as intrinsically watchable as it is, in spite of the content. Tonino Delli Colli’s cinematography complements Dante Ferretti’s superb production design perfectly, and Pasolini blocks shots in a way that’s in keeping with the paintings he admired. Seeing SALÒ is a lot like seeing a 16th century depiction of hell set in motion, only with decidedly human tormentors on display. It never once ceases to be beautifully composed, even when it reaches full-on nightmare intensity.
That intensity is maintained for the greater part of the film, rising up from the feelings of unease that permeate the opening act and through the increasingly bizarre transgressions of the Circle of Obsessions. Things reach a fever pitch when the Circle of Shit begins, and the sequence in which a grieving young woman [her mother drowned while trying to protect her from the fascists] is forced to eat a piece of feces with a spoon is as pure and unrelenting a horror as any I’ve yet encountered. All the worse that it’s filmed in lingering and distant wide shots, and paced in such away that it maintains a startling immediacy.
In spite of its propensity for graphic nudity, sex, and violence, SALÒ is as far from being base exploitation or pornography as can be possible. That the grotesque is accompanied by endless pomp and circumstance, courtesy of the libertines, further removes it from that realm. Nothing Pasolini puts on screen is intended to titillate or entertain in any traditional sense. Even the moments free of overt sadism are disquieting, with the audience given opportunity to question just how far the film will go while the libertines espouse their absurd philosophy. In keeping with Pasolini’s own ideas, there is no hope to be found in SALÒ – no deus ex machina that erupts onto the screen to stop the madness before it’s too late. It doesn’t take long for the viewer to realize that the ever-present drone of bombers will never amount to more. There is no resolution, only a lingering sense that the horror doesn’t end just because the screen has faded to black.
One of the most frightening aspects of SALÒ is its depiction of the ability, nay desire, of human beings to conform. The victims of the tale stand idly by while others are assaulted, laugh at the libertines’ sick and unfunny jokes, and by the end of the picture seem ready to rat on anyone they can to earn the good graces of their hosts. The final shot is of two of the fascist collaborators dancing an awkward waltz as a host of young people are brutally murdered just outside. Its as resounding and indelible an image as is to be found in SALÒ, hinting that the younger generation will be no improvement over the old [perhaps a commentary on Pasolini's disdain for the impotence of the student movement of the 60's and 70's]. There is but a single moment of overt rebellion – one of the libertines’ goons, who falls in love with a black house maid and dares to have private heterosexual intercourse. Before being executed he attacks the fascist ideals of his masters, silently raising a clenched fist in support of leftist political activism.
SALÒ has a long [and continuing] history of censorship and controversy that I’ll not relate here – those interested can find all they need to know on that front elsewhere online. Those questioning the artistic merit or importance of the film need only look to the British Film Institute, who chose it as the inaugural title for their new line of Blu-rays. The Criterion Collection first released it to DVD in 1998, but that disc went quickly out of print and became a rare and ridiculously priced collector’s item [routinely fetching prices of $200 and up].
Criterion’s re-issue from August 2008 is, as should be expected, a vast improvement over their disc from a decade earlier, though it retains the same spine number [17]. The 16:9 enhanced progressive transfer is simply stunning, with all instances of damage removed during the high definition restoration process. Detail is strong throughout and the colors and contrast, while a little boosted, are beautiful to behold [I prefer the more vibrant color scheme and how it contrasts with the brutality that unfolds]. This is undoubtedly the best SALÒ has ever looked on North American home video, and probably the best it will look until Criterion inevitably releases the film on Blu-ray. Audio is presented in two fine Dolby Digital monophonic tracks, one featuring the original Italian and the other an English dub. I didn’t find the English dub option nearly so grating as many of the reviewers before me, though the Italian is certainly the preferred. The fidelity of both is excellent, with Ennio Morricone’s sparse and haunting score well represented. Very readable and well translated optional English subtitles are included.
There is a brief, 25 second, segment of film missing from the Criterion restoration – in which one of the libertines quotes a poem by Gottfried Brend. This footage was apparently not a part of the original film negative, though it has been restored from alternative 35mm sources for the BFI DVD and Blu-Ray editions. Other than this, the Criterion reissue is complete.
Supplements are stacked for this release, starting with an original theatrical trailer included on the feature disc. Disc two has a bounty of informative content: the documentaries Salo: Yesterday and Today [33 minutes], Fade to Black [23 minutes], and The End of Salo [40 minutes], as well as interviews with production designer Dante Ferreti and film scholar Jean-Pierre Gorin. Included with the two disc package is an extensive 80 page booklet featuring a host of essays by Neil Bartlett, Catherine Breillat, Naomi Greene, Sam Rohdie, and Gary Indiana as well as excerpts from the production diary of Gideon Bachmann. The digipack packaging is of The Criterion Collection’s usual high standard, leaving this one looking more like an expensive book than a DVD on the shelf.
I’ve kept the included screen captures as G-rated as possible for this effort – not wishing to advertise SALÒ’s graphic content explicitly for fear that it may lead some readers to seek the film out for the wrong reasons. That said, I’m not trying to dissuade potential viewers. SALÒ is a film after all and is, as such, meant to be seen. But discretion is always wise in the case of a controversial production like this, and those interested in seeing it would do well to inform themselves of not just the how of the graphic subject matter, but the why. I found myself appreciating the film a great deal, even on my first viewing, and will be revisiting it, even if not very often.
SALÒ is one of the most brutal films I’ve ever seen, and one of the most beautiful. The content is as prescient now as ever before, and its difficult for a person of my generation not to conjure up images of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal once the sadism begins. I see no reason not to recommend, with the caveat that it be approached with appropriate discretion and all due respect.
and 
