Salò, or the 120 Days of
Sodom
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Salò o le 120 giornate di
Sodoma (Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom), commonly referred to
as Salò, is a controversial 1975 Italian drama film written
and directed by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini with
uncredited writing contributions by Pupi Avati. It is based
on the book The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade.
Because of its scenes depicting intensely graphic violence,
sadism, and sexual depravity, the movie was extremely
controversial upon its release, and remains banned in
several countries to this day. It was Pasolini's last film;
he was murdered shortly before Salò was released.
The film focuses on four
wealthy, corrupted fascist libertines in Benito Mussolini's
Italy in 1944 who kidnap a total of eighteen teenage boys
and girls and subject them to four months of extreme
violence, sadism, sexual and mental torture before finally
executing them one by one. The film is noted for exploring
the themes of political corruption, abuse of power, sadism,
perversion, sexuality, and fascism.
Although it remains a
controversial film to this day, it has been praised by
various film historians and critics, and while not typically
considered a horror film, Salò was named the 65th scariest
film ever made by the Chicago Film Critics Association in
2006 and is the subject of an article in The Penguin
Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986).
Plot
The film is set in the Republic of Salò, the
Fascist-occupied portion of Italy in 1944. The story is in
four segments loosely parallel to Dante's Inferno: the
Anteinferno, the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit, and
the Circle of Blood.
Four men of power, the Duke
(Duc de Blangis), the Bishop, the Magistrate (Curval), and
the President (apparently Durcet) agree to marry each
other's daughters as the first step in a debauched ritual.
With the aid of several collaborator young men, they kidnap
eighteen young men and women (nine of each sex), and take
them to a palace near Marzabotto. Accompanying them are four
middle-aged prostitutes, also collaborators, whose function
in the debauchery will be to recount erotically arousing
stories for the men of power, and who, in turn, will
sadistically exploit their victims.
The story depicts some of
the many days at the palace, during which the four men of
power devise increasingly abhorrent tortures and
humiliations for their own pleasure. In the Anteinferno
segment, the captures of some victims by the collaborators
are shown, and, later, the four lords examining them. The
Circle of Manias presents some of the stories in the first
part of Sade's book, told by Mrs. Vaccari (Hélène Surgère).
In the Circle of Shit, the passions escalate in intensity
from mainly non-penetrative sex to coprophagia. A most
infamous scene shows a young woman forced to eat the feces
of the Duke; later, the other victims are presented a giant
meal of human feces. The Circle of Blood starts with a black
mass-like wedding between the guards and the men of power,
after which the Bishop has sex with a male victim. The
Bishop then leaves to examine the captives in their rooms,
where they start systematically betraying each other: one
girl is revealed to be hiding a photograph, two girls are
shown to be having a secret sexual affair, and finally, a
collaborator (Ezio Manni) and the black servant (Ines
Pellegrini) are shot down after being found having sex.
Toward the end, the remaining victims who chose to not
collaborate with their fascist tormentors are murdered
through methods like scalping, branding, tongue and eyes cut
out as each libertine takes his turn to watch, as voyeur.
The film's final shot
portrays the complacency, myopia, and desensitization of the
masses: two young soldiers, who had witnessed and
collaborated in all of the prior atrocities, dance a simple
waltz together.
Production
Salò transposes the setting of the Marquis de Sade's book
from 18th century France to the last days of Benito
Mussolini's regime in the Republic of Salò. However, despite
the horrors that it shows (rape, torture, and mutilation),
it barely touches the perversions listed in the book, which
include extensive sexual and physical abuse of
children.
While the book provides the
most important foundations of Salò, the events in the film
draw as much on Pasolini's own life as on Sade's novel.
Pasolini spent part of his early twenties in the Republic of
Salò. During this time he witnessed a great many cruelties
on the part of the Fascist collaborationist forces of the
Salò Republic. Pasolini’s life followed a strange course of
early experimentation and constant struggle. Growing up in
Bologna and Friuli, Pasolini was introduced to many leftist
examples in mass culture from an early age. He began writing
at age seven, heavily under the influence of French poet
Arthur Rimbaud. His writing quickly began to incorporate
certain aspects of his personal life, mainly dealing with
constant familial struggles and moving from city to city.
After studying major
literary giants in high school, Pasolini enrolled in the
University of Bologna for further education. Many of his
memories of the experience led to the conceptualization of
"Salò." He also claimed that the film was highly symbolic
and metaphorical; for instance, that the coprophagia scenes
were an indictment of mass-produced foods, which he labeled
"useless refuse."
Although his career, in
both film and literature, was highly prolific and
far-reaching, Pasolini dealt with some major constants
within his work. His first published novel in 1955 dealt
with the concept of pimps and scandals within a world of
prostitution. This first novel, titled Ragazzi di vita,
created much scandal and brought about subsequent charges of
obscenity.
One of his first major
films, Accattone (1961), dealt with similar issues and was
also received by an unwelcoming audience, who demanded
harsher codes of censorship. It is hard to quickly sum up
the vast amount of work which Pasolini created throughout
his lifetime, but it becomes clear that so much of it
focused around a very personal attachment to subject matter,
as well as overt sexual themes.
Film's treatment of sexuality
A persistent theme in Salò is the degradation and
modification of the human body. Throughout the story, the
human body is reduced to something of lesser value than a
person - for example, never does a sexual encounter occur in
private (save the consensual sex between the Bishop and a
young captive). Salò has been referred to as a film
presenting the "death of sex", a "funeral dirge" of
eroticism amidst sex's mass commercialization. Although
men and women are naked throughout the story, sexual
intercourse mostly is presented as an act of degradation.
Thus, one of the libertines makes love to a guard, then goes
to inspect the captive teenagers. When he finds two women
making love (in violation of the libertines' laws), they
reveal that another guard has been sleeping with a maid. The
libertines then seek and kill the guard and the maid. Salò's
depiction of sexual intercourse contrasts with that in
erotic cinema: Salò presents sexual intercourse as pain, and
deliberately avoids cinematic foreplay, leaving the sex acts
as devoid of romantic allure and intrigue.