by Allan Fish
(Italy 1975 117m) DVD1/2
Aka. The 120 Days of Sodom; Salò, O le Centoventi Giornate di Sodoma
We fascists are the only true anarchists
p Alberto Grimaldi d Pier Paolo Pasolini w Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sergio Citti novel “Les 120 Journees de Sodome” by the Marquis de Sade ph Tonino Delli Colli ed Nino Baragli, Tatiana Casini Morigi m Ennio Morricone (including “Veris Leta Fecis” from “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff) art Dante Ferretti cos Danilo Donati
Paolo Bonacelli (The Duke), Giorgio Cataldi (The Monsignore), Uberto Paolo Quintevalle (His Excellency), Aldo Velletti (The President), Caterina Boratto (Signora Castelli), Elsa de’ Giorgi (Signora Maggi), Helena Surgere (voiced by Laura Betti) (Signora Vaccari), Sonia Saviange (The Pianist), Ines Pellegrini (Maid),
In 1975 three great Italian directors were working on three very different works that now seem intrinsically linked. At one end of the spectrum Bernardo Bertolucci was making his magisterial but flawed analysis of the effects of fascism, 1900, and at the other end, there was the dying Luchino Visconti, mourning past glories in his final masterpiece L’Innocente. In the middle we have this sickening but impossibly potent attack on consumerism and Italy’s fascist past. If Visconti’s final film was a requiem to himself, Pasolini’s was the cinematic equivalent of signing your own death warrant. Before the film was properly released the director was beaten to death and run over by his own sports car in the sickest of prophetic ironies. After watching his swansong, one would be forgiven for thinking that he’d have welcomed no longer living in a world he loathed.
Though essentially based on the infamous banned novel of the Marquis de Sade, it does water down that novel’s elements quite substantially – removing the incestuous nature of the story by having its principal four degenerates round up and abuse random youths rather than marry and sexually degrade each other’s daughters. Set in the eponymous doomed final republic of Mussolini’s fascist Italy in 1944, the action is transported not only from Switzerland but from the late 18th century, and no-one can say it is not prescient. Too prescient indeed for Pasolini’s own good, his own disgust with modern day materialism, an apathy to his nation’s shameful fascist past and consumerism resulting in a film which truly is extremely hard to watch in places, being as it is, in the words of Mark Kermode, “entirely populated by murderous sadists and strangely complicit victims brought together in a stylised orgy of sexual degradation and death.” Sequences such as one of the girls pissing into the mouth of one of the degenerate leaders, or the same leader making one girl eat his excrement (actually chocolate mousse, a metaphor for junk food if ever there was one), or the casual sodomising of servant girls both when serving the fascist masters and in mock marriage ceremonies, pale into insignificance against the backdrop of the last act. Pasolini refuses to allow us to sympathise or empathise with his distantly shot victims, emphasised by Orff’s funereal piece – as eyes are gouged, boys are anally raped and tongues are cut out, the viewer is forced to view as the sadistic dignitaries do – through binoculars which are even ambiguously turned the wrong way round. The occasional roar of Allied planes overhead tells us that this evil regime is doomed, but it makes the sequence and the film in general no less easy to watch.
It was shot over the exact length of time it took de Sade to write the novel – 37 days – and also borrowed from Dante’s immortal ‘Inferno’, not just in terms of bringing hell to life, but in terms of the circular narrative structure. Interviewed on the set Pasolini exclaimed that he was showing “what power does to the human being, to the human body”, but this is much more than mere egotism gone mad to the point of anarchy. He makes us, the audience, complicit, and it’s this that still alienates some critics to this day. When Bernardo Bertolucci first saw it he couldn’t bear it, unable to escape the images of the recently deceased Pasolini’s body in the newspapers. Later, he realised that it was both “atrocious and sublime.” And that is as good as description as one could hope to offer. Those of a faint heart should move along, there’s nothing to see.
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This is one of the sickest, most nauseating films ever made. But it’s a condemnation of fascism made near the end of Pasolini’s life which also makes a statement about his corrosive world view. The opinions I think have always run to extremes, some calling it a masterpiece, others total shit.
One of your best reviews of its kind, by which I mean a succinct summary of a film’s history, story, and, most importantly, its effect. Well-done, sir. (I have not seen this film, but expect to before the year is out.)
Whether one finds the film sick or “total shit” is merely a matter of opinion. I too have seen this film and find parts of it nauseating and completely tough to take. Then again, I cannot watch HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER but I still think the film is a work of art as well as a study of psychopathy. I find most of Scorsese’s LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST to be spiritually uplifting and hauntingly beautiful but am repulsed by the graphic violence and blood-shed during the crucifixion. But, again, it’s art. I agree that Pasolini walks a fine line here, but it’s still art. I just don’t revisit SALO anymore.
Pasolini’s main thrust in this decadent and depraved film of course was to assault fascism, but there’s little doubt he attacks society’s excesses in more ways than one. The tie-in by Allan to the Marquis de Sade is most warranted, and the director flaunts his homsexuality in ‘high-profile.’ Joe is right to say what he does above, but likewise Allan, is dead-on to stress its importance, even though I would not have this film remotely close to a Top 25, even though I revere the director. There’s one scene here that makes it’s contemporary equivalent in Waters’s PINK FLAMINGOS seem like a harmless lick on an ice cream cone.
Yes, but in Pink Flamingos it was a real turd, in Salo it’s chocolate mousse.
I never took to Pasolini as a filmmaker. A couple of films I find passable but most of his work is just very hard for me to sit through. I can only echo Fellini who suggested once that Pasolini should have stuck to his poetry (and he is an important poet)!
Kaleem, what about the Gospel According to Saint Matthew? Thankfully he did not stick to poetry.
That’s one of his better films though I am generally speaking not a great fan of Christ films. I think one should watch a number of Bergman films with von Sydow if one wants that sort of thing! Did like Scorsese’s film to a great degree. Most of the other works are simply too earnest. This is actually fine when one does a Ten Commandments because the subject has a lot of inherent drama to it and certainly lends itself easily to great commercial entertainment. The Christ films more often than not come off as turgid. I know some of the canonical works in this regard and many might find my opinion here a bit shocking but I think Christ could be done far better than he has been for the most part.
To add to the earlier point I am all for films on ‘faith’ or religious themes but I am not for exercises in ‘piety’ which is what the films often end up becoming. Whatever my reservations about all of these canonical Christ films, I consider these masterpieces compared to the abomination Gibson’s film was.
Well Allan, regardless it’s what we as viewers perceived it to be. But yes what you say there is quite right.
Kaleem: Pasolini is not everyone’s cup of tea, you are right there. I’ll admit I do like him, and that GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW is his masterpiece. But aside from that, even those who like him don’t quite know what to make of SALO! Ha!
I suppose one man’s chocolate mousse is another man’s shit.
I won’t enter the debate on the merits of this film, only to say that many gay artists seem to have a penchant for shock tactics, but in the final analysis, they alienate many more than they ever reach.
I would also take issue with Allan’s implication here: “Pasolini’s was the cinematic equivalent of signing your own death warrant.” Pasoloni’s killing was a sordid crime of passion, not an assassination.
Yep Tony, I was always under the impression that his death was definitely ‘a crime of passion.’
Kudos to Allan for one of his best reviews yet! “Entirely populated by murderous sadists” is a classic descriptive line.
I would also like to commend Larry Wise for making sure that each of Sam’s five children had seen scenes from the movie before they reached the age of five!
Yes Jason, yes. The education of Sam’s kids in the art of psychopathy has long been noted. Viewings of SALO have been the norm since Melanie was knee high to a grasshopper, and since then they have all been subjected to TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, SUSPERIA and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS!!!! Just the other day Danny (Sam’s middle kid of the five) was thrilled over the fact he got a new T shirt of Heath Ledger decked out as a blood splattered Joker. “My Hero!” Was all the child could exclaim. Considering the penchant each child has for talent with guns, knives, razor blades, sharp objects, axes and vicious dogs, I’d say Schmulee’s education of the killing arts is coming along nicely. I fully expect to read the papers one day in the future with the headline that one of them has murdered everyone in the house. Adorable children, really..
Well, if you can be killed by shrieking, Jillian might do a Fay Wray and shatter everyone’s eardrums. She even snores on the decibel scale.
I saw this for the first time last evening. I must admit that despite being the least squeamish person I know, this film still had me uncontrollably gagging in parts. But I think that’s the point, and it was quite a visceral experience.
Your review does a fine job of describing the film’s background and most salacious excerpts, but interestingly you gloss over what I felt was Salo‘s most effective technique: using the figure of de Sade’s “storyteller” as simply that, and resisting the urge to dramatize the subversively bawdy tales as they drip from her experienced mouth (we instead watch the intended effect on the “audience” within the film, who are using the erotic narratives for arousal). The implication seems to be that there is always the need for text where raw sexuality is concerned — just as we “preserve” our erotic histories with verbal memories that (at least in American culture) become epic poetry of sorts. That the main characters are sadists and fascists is also significant: though capable of unthinkable brutality, they rely on the “text” and the submission of their victims for identity — they seem unable to generate their own titillating oral histories. And even in the “circle of blood,” the most visible pleasures are had by the voyeur rather than the murderer, which brings up interesting questions regarding the distancing “simulation” of cinema. Perhaps sex, like violence, is always better when someone else is doing it for you, especially on a screen. I think the 4 libertines probably would have licked their lips at the thought of home video.
Jon, this is Allan’s review of course, but that won’t stop me from saying how “exciting” it is to hear that you saw this last night for the first time. The “storytelling technique” you mention there seems to be applicable also to some of Pasolini’s other work, like CANTERBURY TALES, DECAMERON and ARABIEN NIGHTS. Your points here are most fascinating….”perhaps sex, like violence, is always better when someone is doing it for you…” Are you aware Jon (as I know you are a DVD lover and collector) that before this was re-released recently by Criterion, that the OOP DVD was selling at one point for over $800.00 on e bay for several years and was the most valuable disc of them all? Geez, if we had bought a busload when it came out we’d be living on a tropical island right now! Ha!
The “storytelling technique” you mention there seems to be applicable also to some of Pasolini’s other work, like CANTERBURY TALES, DECAMERON and ARABIEN NIGHTS.
Absolutely true, though I have not yet seen all of those films. It may be most applicable of all of “The Gospel…Matthew”: Jesus, as with the most arousing sex in Salo (not arousing to me, but considered as such by characters in the film) is entirely a second-hand affair, taken on faith, and organized into an understandable, detailed story. Pasolini, like me, is a non-believer fascinated with the odd distinctions between the gospels both as history and literature.
And yeah, I did know about the high prices of that Salo DVD — it’s somehow quite fitting, as though promoting a snuff film to the status of a collector’s item…
Another one I finally caught up with in the past few weeks. Definitely gross but what also struck me was that the filmmaking was not ugly – and YET it was not quite beautiful either. It was a well-crafted film, but somehow completely sterile in its mise en scene … which was exactly the point, of course. Pasolini did not want us taking any pleasure, either from a gritty raw aesthetic or a wonderfully beautiful one. At leas that’s how I took it.
Like most, I’m not eager to return to it but I would love to further investigate its political implications. Yes, the characters are fascist and yes, they do awful things, but I suspect the political/aesthetic critique cuts deeper than that. I remember hearing that Pasolini used what he considered to be fascist music and works of art (a concept that fascinates me) and am eager to find out more about the ways the film’s aesthetic and political meaning tie together.
All in all, what intrigues me about fascism is how it’s simultaneously attractive (remember, it usually rose as a popular movement in the countries it took over in the 20s and 30s; and quite a few artists and intellectuals went around for the ride, seeing it as wildly romantic) and repulsive (the crimes fascism committed are some of the most appalling and evil the century has ever seen, which is saying something). And how both qualities are central and in a way indivisible…almost as if pleasure, power, and violence, were inextricably related. It seems this is in part what Pasolini was getting at with this film, but at times it’s tough to see the political critique for the shit-eating. I don’t see myself sitting down to watch this again, at least not for a while, but perhaps I’ll close my eyes and listen to the commentary one of these days…