Salo Or The 120 Days Of Sodom Details

Relocating the Marquis de Sade's infamous novel to wartime Italy, this film has become synonymous with sexual deviance and bestial violence. Yet, the soon-to-be-murdered Pier Paolo Pasolini had loftier ambitions than simply shocking the critics who thought his work obscene. The plot here is brutishly simple: a group of dignitaries hole up in a remote castle, intent on enacting their unspeakably heinous fantasies using a group of captive youths. But the action is in fact a political metaphor, with each of the men representing a social pillar that had delivered the nation into the hands of the Fascists — the law, the merchants, the aristocracy and the church. The degradation is often viewed from a distance or allowed to continue off screen, part of Pasolini's strategy for making the audience uncomfortably aware of its own passivity. So devastating, it's almost unwatchable.

Whether you regard this bleak film as obscene or as a relentless examination of the effects of capitalism on sexuality, its scenes of brutal consumption, rape and torture make it difficult to watch; its despair is palpable.