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SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
If ever there were a film whose reputation truly preceded it, that film is almost certainly Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (1975). Widely hailed as the most disgusting and/or disturbing movie of all time, it is indeed a profoundly unsettling viewing experience. It’s also a thoughtful, poetic and even beautiful piece of work, which in a strange way only intensifies the horror.
The Package
As one of the few who can lay claim to reading the Marquis de Sade’s 18th
Century opus THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM cover to cover, I can attest that it’s a
vile, offensive and deeply psychotic novel. It’s the story of four wealthy
libertines who imprison several young people in an elegant villa and subject
then to every imaginable variety of sexual torture. The novel, allegedly
written on a long strip of parchment while de Sade was imprisoned in the
Bastille, is essentially a catalog of perversions which by the end devolves into
a dispassionate listing of atrocities.
The legendary Pier Paolo Pasolini made this film during a period of
disillusionment following his bawdy “Trilogy of Life” (THE DECAMERON, THE
CANTERBURY TALES and THE ARABIAN NIGHTS). SALO OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (SALO O
LE 120 GIORNATE DI SODOMA), adapted from Sade’s novel but relocated to
Mussolini’s republic of Salo during the waning days of WWII, was Pasolini’s
grimmest film by far. It was intended as a metaphor for the tyranny of
consumerism, but its horrors took on a very real context when Pasolini was
stabbed to death (allegedly) by a male prostitute mere weeks after editing was
completed.
It seems many people have a difficult time separating the grisly facts of
Pasolini’s murder from the content of SALO, which partially explains its
reputation as the most extreme movie of all time. In truth, far more extreme
films had already come and gone, including
VIVA LA MUERTE
(1971) and VASE DE NOCES (1974), but both are now largely forgotten while SALO
has retained its notoriety.
The Story
In Salo, the short-lived Italian republic set up by Mussolini in 1944-45,
four men are encouraged by fascist authorities to indulge their most depraved
proclivities. They kidnap several young people and shut them up in a
sumptuously decorated country villa, where over the next several days madness
and murder become the norm.
Each day begins with a demonic woman telling the group a sexually tinged
story, which stimulates the imaginations of the four overseers. Anal rape is a
favored activity, which escalates to casual murder (a woman is forced to swallow
nails) and a literal banquet of shit. A mock wedding is held with all-naked
onlookers, and on another occasion the villa’s inhabitants are made to crawl
around and act like dogs.
The final outrage is committed in the villa’s courtyard, where those who
have disobeyed the “rules”--a young woman who cried about her Jewish mother
getting executed, others who tried to escape, and others who exhibited
tenderness (the ultimate sin)--are tortured to death. The overseers alternate
between partaking in the torture and dispassionately observing the action from
one of the villa’s upper rooms, while the ominous rumble of approaching fighter
planes is heard.
The Direction
Those looking for pornography or a gore fest (two things SALO has been
falsely labeled) will be disappointed, as the film is a detached and
contemplative affair with painterly wide shots and an excess of dissolves. Any
sense of eroticism is obliterated by Pasolini’s staunch formalism, which
emphasizes design and visual symmetry over emotion. Furthermore, the characters
punctuate the naughtiness with lengthy philosophical discussions.
Yet as an evocation of ugliness and despair SALO has few equals. By all
accounts Pasolini was in an extremely depressed mood when he made this film, and
an all-consuming sense of hopelessness suffuses the finished product. The
copious scenes of humiliation and torture are made all the more unsettling by
the fact that the victims rarely ever make much of a fuss about their
mistreatment, having already abandoned all hope. The film’s sole revolutionary
moment, when a young man gives the communist salute before being littered with
bullets, is in keeping with Pasolini’s nihilistic mood: once a committed
Marxist, in this scene he grudgingly acknowledges that politics and revolution
have lost any power they might once have held.
Of course SALO is most impressive from a pure filmmaking standpoint. It
has a poetic sheen, with sumptuous art direction by the great Dante Ferretti,
crisp cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli, and, in the final sequence, perhaps
Pasolini’s most daring use of the medium. In it we see the torture in the
courtyard entirely through binoculars, with only the rumbling of fighter planes
(and a portion of CARMINA BURANA) as aural accompaniment. In this way we
literally assume the eyesight of the torture’s overseers, which appears to have
been Pasolini’s goal all along. May filmmakers have posited that the audience
is complicit in the horrors they depict onscreen, but none more forcefully than
Pier Paolo Pasolini in SALO OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM.
Vital Statistics
SALO OR THE 120
DAYS OF SODOM (SALO O LE 120 GIORNATE DI SODOMA)
Produzioni Europee Associate/United Artists
Director: Pier
Paolo Pasolini
Producer: Alberto De Stefanis, Antonio Girasante, Alberto Grimaldi
Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolini (and Sergio Citti,
Pupi Avati)
(Based on a novel by
the Marquis de Sade)
Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli
Editing: Nino Baragli, Tatiana Casini Morigi, Enzo Ocone
Cast: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto P. Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti,
Catarina Boratto, Elsa De Giorgi, Helene Surgere, Sonia Saviange, Sergio
Fascetti, Bruno Musso, Giuliana Melis