cast :
crew :
release date :
Some films you watch, and others you simply experience, and Pasolini’s last film ‘Salo; or The 120 Days of Sodom’ (1975), certainly pushes the boundaries of the latter, a film that despite boasting the occasional artistic merit, is so vile and revolting it could never be considered a film of which to like or enjoy, and since Pasolini was murdered by a young male prostitute shortly after its completion, “a gruesome affair involving a nail-studded picket fence and his own sports car ” (Indiana, 2000, 13), such questions of how to explain its very existence can never really be answered. And so ‘Salo’s’ cinematic legacy, from Pasolini’s fate to the films’ mass, worldwide banning, have pushed it to a legendary status, a known whisper in the forbidden corner of film history’s grubbier archives, and indeed, experiencing it even today, it’s reputation as the most disturbing film ever made has not been tainted.
To begin with, the sexually explicit content of the Marquis De Sade’s 1785 novel, ‘The 120 Days of Sodom’, of which features “oral and anal penetration practically on every page, in ever more complicated, gymnastic combinations” (Indiana, 2000, 71) has since been justified for mass publication for being a satirical allegory upon France’s established forces of its day. Pasolini’s film adaptation then, resituates this allegory to 1940’s Mussolini’s era Italy, in which four fascist libertines, an accountant, an aristocrat, a bishop, and a lawman, enslave groups of young men and women, and in a fortified villa from which there is no escape, subject them to escalating levels of various sexual tortures and humiliations before the eventual execution of them all.
The film is not only disturbing for the cruel graphic content of which we see on screen, but because its artistic and moral focus is also somewhat confused, as suspiciously, are the faces of its young, naked cast involved. Therefore, the only true way to criticize ‘Salo; or the 120 Days of Sodom’, is upon how insightful it might be into the history or power roles it supposedly observes, and so by referencing Gary Indiana’s own personal guide to the film, and Richard Bosworth’s biography of the real Mussolini, can ‘Salo; or the 120 Days of Sodom’ ever be a considered a justified work of art? Firstly, it’s relevant to mention that; “Salo presents an animated frieze, a series of figure-ground manipulations within the pictorial space of the villa, which is itself an elaborate meditation on the organized space in Renaissance perspective and its contribution to the organization of life under capitalism” (Indiana, 2000, 70). In this sense, with capitalism put aside for a moment, Pasolini’s metaphor as fascist metaphor works; the captors all represent the wealthy pillars of that society of which have been largely accused of delivering Italy to Mussolini’s regime. Most notably with the identification of the lawman, who’s assembly are said to have “not object(ed) when Francesco Giunta justified salutary Fascist violence on the grounds that the national government had ‘gone missing’ in the newly annexed territories of Italy’s north and east” (Bosworth, 2002, 149). And even more specifically, the bishop, who may represent the fact that “there were advantages to be won from the suggestion that the new Pope, ex-archbishop of Milan, who took the title of Pius XI, might be tolerant toward the ‘better side’ of fascism” (Bosworth, 2002, 165). It is also worth mentioning in the context of the film’s other two ‘pillars’ that due to the economic struggles of Italy in the 1920’s, the wealthy industrialists and economists who were bugged by the persistent socialist strikes, were also attracted by the notion of Mussolini’s regime.
Meanwhile, the youth of the young captives in the film could personify Italy’s potential future under this regime, a future that in this sense is literally being stripped and raped (made vulnerable for consumption) and portrayed virtually without character. “Everyone is reduced to numerical flesh; none of the flesh has a personality, only animal expressiveness. Aside from a few special instances, the victims are denied the use of language, hence the ability to be seen as persons” (Indiana, 2000, 34). They have become a voiceless conglomerate of which to be penetrated and abused, and some eventually, (despite the intentions of most of the actors being somewhat unclear) even appear to become complacent in their acts. Whilst the four fascist captors may come to justify such a metaphor here, it is when Pasolini tries to incorporate his cynical thoughts on consumer culture that his allegory starts to feel both exploitative and confused. Indiana goes on to explain of Pasolini that; “after World War II, the waning of regional identities under pressure of industrialization, the decline of dialects as the Italian language became homogenised by mass media (linguistic homogenisation had also been an important goal of the fascists) were for Pasolini catastrophes beyond reckoning, an ‘anthropological genocide’” (Indiana, 2000, 18). Whilst the fascist’s homogenisation of language may explain the victims voiceless-ness here, their wealthy captors appear too out of time for the consumer media age and can therefore not be seen as wholly responsible for it, even it was to take the lead in Italy shortly after the war had ended.
These thoughts on consumer culture are also expressed through some of the most shocking, and sinisterly unjust metaphors ever seen on film; the notorious scene in which a young girl is punished for her own emotional breakdown by being forced to eat her captor’s excrement is disturbing cinema at its rawest, it’s slow build up to her inevitable humiliation, whilst the sounds of war planes drone ever louder from above is queasy, nauseating stuff indeed. And to agree with Indiana when he claims “Pasolini’s characterisation of the scene as a metaphor for the consumer society and its processed foods doesn’t sound entirely frivolous” (Indiana, 2000, 79), this is the first time that the films social commentary appears to go off the rails, and where its excessive content outweighs its metaphorical grounding. Indeed, this is much of the problem with ‘Salo; or The 120 Days of Sodom’, for even when it is semi-justified, all it appears to be saying is ‘this is why fascism (or, more feebly, consumerism) is bad’, and even if this was to open up as a wider expression on the potential horrors of totalitarian power as a whole then, all it merely conveys a rather one sided, cynical message that all humans would be degenerates if only given a chance. Had ‘Salo; or The 120 Days of Sodom’ been a painting, a singular impressionistic image of the grotesque, (at times it does feel very Francis Bacon) its content may have worked, but as a film, it is not only a frustratingly slow and unflinchingly nasty one to watch, but even its Dante-esque three act structure from ‘the circle of hell, the circle of shit’, to ‘the circle of blood’, doesn’t really seem to have much relevance except to reflect upon our own deteriorating mental states as we watch ever onward towards the films gruesome climax.
The historical relevance of Salo, the actual place, was that it became the headquarters of Mussolini’s “ new Italian Social Republic (RSI) which since September 1943, had been established to provide some sort of fascist governance in northern Italy” (Bosworth, 2002, 13), of which soon fell into bloody warfare with the Southern resistance after “Bodaglio (the proceeding prime minister) and King Victor Emmanuel bungled an attempt to change sides” (Bosworth, 2002, 370) without Hitler finding out; Salo in fact, may have been the last official place of his control before eventually being shot several miles away on the borderlands in an attempt to flee the country from both sides of the civil fallout. Hereby, the relevance of the place in conjunction with the events of the film never feel directly connected per se, therefore failing to express anything of the politics of this moment, of which should surely, in artistic terms, been Pasolini’s point. In the end, too many of Pasolini’s personal, and flawed opinions are thrown into the mix, ultimately misdirecting Salo’s intended purpose, such as “even his lightest works (and they are few) Pasolini constructs a case, sometimes elaborately layered, in favour of a more ‘natural’ form of social organisation, and against the middle class” (Indiana, 2000, 19). This is ironic since Pasolini was, of course, a member of the middle class, and such an opinion was probably not shared, but things get further confused upon the insertion of some of his own personal experiences of World War II wherein “(his) brother was shot by communist partisans, and the director’s legend transformed this death into a martyrdom by fascists” (Indiana, 2000, 37), an event of which no doubt made him into the rebel rule breaking celebrity he was, but also fuelled the films unique brand of existential bitterness. Either way, for all its inconsistencies, whether technical, moral, or artistic, he set out to make a film that shocked and disturbed, and after watching the films gruelling final act, the film is still the fascinating, debatable dark lord of extreme cinema it always was, and simply by gaining this mantle, ‘Salo; or the 120 Days of Sodom’ has achieved something.
Country: Italy/France
Budget: $18000 aprox.
Length: 118mins
Bibliography:
•Indiana, Gary, 2000, Salo; or the 120 Days of Sodom, London, BFI Publishing.
•Bosworth, Richard, J.B, 2002, Mussolini, London, Arnold.
Pub/2008
More like this:
Il Casanova di Fellini (Fellini’s Casanova), 1976, directed by Federico Fellini
Funny Games, 1997, directed by Michael Haneke
Irreversible, 2002, directed by Gaspar Noe