Salo Or The 120 Days Of Sodom (1975)

bobbyperu from Merseyside , 07/10/2004

Salo concerns itself with a group of fascists who, during the retreat at the end of the Second World War, take up residency in an old mansion, kidnap a selection of young people, chosen for their looks and breeding, and rape and torture them to death. That's it. No plot, no characters (no one has a name), just two hours of degradation, depicted by Pasolini in arguably the most graphic manner ever depicted on film.

To say Salo is upsetting, disturbing and repulsive is to make a vast understatement. Why then, does an established and respected director such as Pasolini make something so appaling? The film is concerned with the finality of fascism, the rotten ideology of absolute power from which nothing new can come. Therefore, the film is meant to represent the end of everything; morality, liberty, humanity.

Salo is not a film that will entertain, it is not a film you will 'enjoy' per se. It is a demanding film, as demanding as any film has ever been. It is also intensely problematic - sometimes the emotionless, pitiless camera is so unflinching in depicting the acts that you suspect that the acts are being relished (something that sunk 'The Passion Of The Christ', for example).

Salo is recommended only for those with very strong stomachs, and those with an interest in Pasolini's work. You have been warned.

  25 out of 27 people found this review helpful

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filmjack3 from new jersey , 14/07/2004

...meaning that if a viewer can stay tuned, as I could, through the 'Circle of S***' segment, then a viewer can sit through just about anything that's on celluloid. It's indeed appropriate that it's called the most disturbing and disgusting film ever made, as it well could be. As I watched all the way through till the end I got the same feeling as I did watching Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Both films go out on a limb with excesses (although Gibson's excesses were arguably not as faithful to the source as Pasolini was), and I have to say that at least from an objective point of view Pier Paolo Pasolini gets the job done there. With great cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli (Once Upon a Time in the West) providing the sometimes exquisite camera-work and lighting, Ennio Morricone delivering a slight, but melodic tone in the background, and with interesting sets, plus an interesting editing style that doesn't entirely show as much of the grotesque and sex as it could've, the craft behind the film is pretty good. If one were to look past the subject matter, it's actually a very well constructed piece of film art, which is why many consider it important.

I suppose it's a unique film, but you couldn't pay me to want to watch it again (unless it was in a film class where the teacher proved himself to have reason to have us watch it). At the core, Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, is interesting as a concept, from which it was taken from Sade's novel - a group of fascists during the end of world war two capture some boys and girls and force them to go under sexual and mental tortures. As in the book (which I've never read and don't really have a desire to seek out at this point in my life), the acts are relentless, and in between the fascists instilling fear and intense degradation. By the end, it's a controlled chaos as most are dead and those who aren't look on with binoculars. Now, the problem is with this material, at least for me, it becomes very subjective.

I can see the core point PPP's making (it's almost like a twisted satire), and it does remind me how much fascism is the worst kind of ideology there is on Earth...But then the relentlessness of it all becomes very, very close to unbearable (i.e. endurance test). And, reminding me again of 'The Passion', Salo doesn't give any of the characters any other kinds of emotions to work in than those they're stuck with. There's no deviating from the paths and fates of the characters, and without any point of entry into the victims (the exclusion being two girls, who all they say are 'I can't take this anymore' to each other), they're left with the controlled state that the villains have put them in. I suppose the acting by these four architects is commendable, but after a while the acts that they thrust upon the kids stops being shocking, and becomes boring. And when a film that is supplied with a talented crew and cast that does whatever PPP tells them to do, and it's boring, it doesn't work for me. The stories by the one woman, in-particular, tend to drag on as her character seems to just think up new ways to entice the heads of the manor into ecstasy.

I guess, in the end, I found Salo to be one of the more difficult films I've ever seen. I know I'm sort of glad I got through with it, but by the end I realized that PPP committed a bit of a film crime (though certainly not deserving of his mysterious death before the film was released) - there's no room for catharsis. This could be argued by some, however I'd have to say that if there was one it was buried underneath the degradation. Because the film is a bit one-dimensional, and hope is a lost cause, by the end all one could reasonably be left with is emptiness. In a way it reminded me of Bergman's Cries and Whispers in how it's just a sea of bleakness and despair for everyone involved, but at least in Bergman's bleak world there are moments of sweet (if maybe brief) humanity and love. I can't recommend Salo except for extreme, die-hard film buffs and for nihilistic types (and maybe for those interested in understanding the nature of fascism), and for those looking for what's worse after Gibson's POTC. It's definitely deserved, either way you take the film, as one of the most notorious, soul-churning pieces ever produced, though I wouldn't say it's one of the very worst.

  19 out of 25 people found this review helpful

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PeterSays from Romsey , 09/05/2007

Salo is infamous for its poo eating scenes but don't let that put you off watching this stylish, pervertedly titillating and worthy film. If, like me, you find the idea of coprophagia … unsavoury … do what I did and look away.

There are countless films that deal with the horrors of totalitarianism during the Second World War but while most simply document them, Salo is one of the few films that look at their causes head on (and I liked the dig at the 'four pillars of the Establishment'). What psychology creates such evil? Why does society not only just tolerate it, but seems, at countless times in history, to actually laud it?

Over the years - over the centuries since de Sade's novel - it is still a sober indictment of human sexuality, or more specifically male lust in all its form and female connivance. Made in 1975, Salo now looks dated, which is either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on your enthusiasm for retro. Certainly, it contrasts starkly with the graphic realism of the violence, particularly the sexual violence, in recent movies, such as Hostel.

The differences over thirty years are not just cinematographic. While Salo looks at forces within Society to explain such abominations, modern movies stress the importance of the individual, the lone loony bent on self-gratification.

It's the zeitgeist. The standard line to explain the abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq is that a few rotten apples can taint a whole barrel, or nation, or philosophy. In his recent book 'The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil', Michael Bywater says that bad systems produce bad situations in which people act badly without knowing why. It may be happening at Guantanamo now.

The evils portrayed in Salo are a real and present danger all the time. We look away at our peril.

  12 out of 12 people found this review helpful

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A customer from York , 23/07/2004

This film is gruelling. The viewer descends to hell with the fascist protagonists and their victims (based on Sades novel, 120 days of sodom).

Pasolini shows how power corrupts, and how, if people take absolute power, they can be absolutely corrupt.

Of course, how Pasolini portrays this relationship between power and coruption is still as controversial as it was in 1975.

Sal? is not an erotic film in the 'blue movie' tradition. Its theme is not erotic pleasure as such but the perversion and subordination of love relationships to those of power.

It is a disturbing and visceral film and it is supposed to be.

  9 out of 12 people found this review helpful

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