Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò O Le 120 Giornate Di Sodoma) - (DVD)
Criterion/Voyager (1975)
Drama, Foreign, Horror, Queer Themes/Interest, War
In Collection
#734
8*
Seen ItYes
(11/5/2016 Home)
715515166416
IMDB   5.9
116 mins Italy / Italian
DVD  Region 1   NR (Not Rated)
Franco Merli Male Victim
Paolo Bonacelli The Duke
Caterina Boratto Signora Castelli
Giorgio Cataldi The Bishop
Aldo Valletti The President
Elsa De Giorgi Signora Maggi
Sergio Fascetti Male Victim
Bruno Musso Male Victim
Antonio Orlando Male Victim
Umberto Paolo Quintavalle The Magistrate
Sonia Saviange The pianist
Hélène Surgère Signora Vaccari
Claudio Cicchetti Male Victim
Umberto Chessari Male Victim
Lamberto Book Male Victim
Director
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Producer Alberto Grimaldi
Alberto De Stefanis
Writer/Composer Pupi Avati
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Marquis de Sade
Sergio Citti


Set in the Nazi-controlled, northern Italian state of Salo in 1944, four dignitaries round up sixteen perfect specimens of youth and take them together with guards, servants and studs to a palace near Marzabotto. In addition, there are four middle-aged women: three of whom recount arousing stories whilst the fourth accompanies on the piano. The story is largely taken up with their recounting the stories of Dante and De Sade: the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit and the Circle of Blood. Following this, the youths are executed whilst each libertine takes his turn as voyeur.
Edition Details
Original Title Salò O Le 120 Giornate Di Sodoma
Distributor Criterion Collection
Release Date 1/26/2016
Screen Ratio Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio Tracks SUB [English]
No. of Discs/Tapes 1
Extras Booklet

Notes
I hesitate to say so for fear of being tagged a pervert -- Salò is a beautiful work of visual art and poetry -- even though it features rape, torture, coprophagy (shit eating), mutilation, and murder -- As Richard Brody details in his capsule review for The New Yorker, “The film is essential to have seen but impossible to watch,” Brody adds: “a viewer may find life itself defiled beyond redemption by the simple fact that such things can be shown or even imagined” (as quoted in Slate, Oct 4 2011) -- While Brody may be overly melodramatic, Pasolini achieved his objective -- He got my attention, and that of many others --

In addition to being a filmmaker, Pasolini was a poet, novelist, and a prominent Italian leftist -- Early, he was active in the Italian Communist Party -- Ardently anti-Fascist -- But at the same time irritating to many leftist and Communists for some of his contra-leftist positions -- And openly gay --

"Even those well acquainted with Pasolini's taste for controversy could hardly have expected the extreme nature of Salò, one of the most chilling films in the history of cinema" (Naomi Greene, DVD essay) -- The film is based on the Marquis de Sade's 1785 book, The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinage -- Four wealthy Fascist libertines occupy a palace in Salò -- the four men represent power: a duke, a priest, a magistrate, and a businessman/capitalist -- They arrange the kidnapping of sixteen attractive youths, male and female (no doubt meant to represent the Bourgeois), and conduct sadistic orgies over three days -- The film itself is highly stylized, mostly visualization with little characterization -- I did not find the film particularly pornographic -- While sexual organs and explicit activity are in abundance, the stylized tableau scenes seem to have been more intended to stimulate aesthetic or emotional feelings, rather than sexually erotic responses --

Much of original The 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade while imprisoned in the Bastille during the social turmoil leading to the French Revolution (incidentally, most of the 120 "days" remained unfinished) -- Pasolini set his film in Salò in the waning days of WWII (in several scenes squadrons of war planes can be heard flying overhead) -- The film itself was made in 1975 during the social and political upheaval then occurring in Western societies --Pasolini used but three "days" in his film --

For me, the film is an allegory, a parable, of the fall of Western civilization -- a Dante's Inferno -- There is no redemption or hope -- Perhaps Pasolini was intending sequels, however I did not find any suggestion of this in the various commentaries I read -- By-the-way, Pasolini described the infamous shit banquet as a metaphor for dinner at McDonalds --

This was Pasolini's last film -- He was murdered shortly after it was finished but before it was release --

I am updating these notes on 8 Nov 2016, while watching USA election returns-- Ominously, we are going down the same dangerous path as Italy and Germany did with the Fascists & Nazis of this film -- The parallels between Trumps sexual escapades and the Fascists is especially striking --

By happenstance, my collection includes both DVD and Bluray editions.