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Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini) 1975
I suppose the film's infamous because of
its depictions of homosexuality, child (they seem to be about 16-20) nudity,
scatology, torture, and the like, but Pasolini's camera rarely show us these
scenes in close-up, so we're able to remain, thankfully,
a bit detached and process what we're seeing intellectually rather than
emotionally. I suppose I was a bit trained by the film's reputation to expect to
see that sort of thing, so I wasn't exceptionally shocked. That's sort of the
point though... throughout the film, we're made to watch atrocities, yet we
continue to watch silently. Even worse, the parade of cruelty grows somewhat
tedious as the film goes on. It makes it a little clearer how something so
horrible as the Holocaust could occur. It becomes apparent that the film itself
is not evil, rather that the film tries to show us something evil (fascism) and
to do so requires some uncomfortable moments.
* * * 1/2 September, 2001 Jeremy Heilman |
Made in 1975 and directed by Pasolini (his final film), Salo is based on
Marquis DeSade's 120 Days of Sodom (which I've never read) , but places the
degradation in that book in a different context : fascist Italy. I thought it
was an effective, if over-the-top, skewering of the evils of a fascist
dictatorship, especially as it is portrayed as it is here (at the end of WWII,
losing, and with nothing to lose). The film opens with the rounding up and
inspection of a group of teenagers. The most attractive are selected and
whisked off to a castle where they are subjected to several sex acts by the
province's president and guests, then systematically tortured and killed. 
All in all, I was impressed how well the film was done. It made it's point quite
well (if excessively). It's true that it has a scene in which an imprisoned girl
is made to urinate on one of the nobility, but in the context of the film, it
makes sense. We understand that here the director is telling us that the ruling
class gets off on the degradation of its subjects.