Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
Directed by	Pier Paolo Pasolini
Written by	Pier Paolo Pasolini Sergio Citti
Produced by	Alberto Grimaldi Alberton De Stefanis Antonio Girasante
Starring	Paolo Bonacelli Giorgio Cataldi Umberto Paolo Quintavalle Aldo Valletti Caterina Boratto Elsa De Giorgi Hélène Surgère Sonia Saviange Renata Moar Franco Merli Inès Pellegrini
Cinematography	Tonino Delli Colli
Edited by	Nino Bragli Tatiana Casini Morigi Enzo Ocone
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	30 January 1976
Running time	112 min
Language	Italian

Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom) is a 1975 film by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the book The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade.

Because of its scenes of intensely sadistic graphic violence, the movie was extremely controversial upon its release, and remains banned in several countries to this day. It is widely regarded as one of the most disturbing films ever made. Pasolini was killed shortly before Salò was released.

Production

Salò transposes the setting of De Sade's book from 18th century France to the last days of Mussolini's regime in the Republic of Salò. However, despite the horrors that it shows (rape, torture, and mutilation), it can barely touch 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 movie draw as much on Pasolini's own life as on de 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 a great 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. The reception of 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 undertones.

Plot and themes

Salò (the film's common abbreviation) occurs in the Republic of Salò, the Fascist rump state established in the Nazi-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 Feces, and the Circle of Blood.

Four men of power, the Duke (Duc de Blangis), the Bishop, the Magistrate (Curval), and the President 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 the many days at the palace, during which the four men of power devise increasingly abhorrent tortures and humiliations for their own pleasure. 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. At story's end, the victims who chose to not collaborate with their fascist tormentors are gruesomely murdered: scalping, branding, tongue and eyes cut out; (see Franco Merli). The viewer is distanced from the grossest tortures, because they are viewed through binoculars. The story's final scene — two young, macho soldiers dancing a waltz, together — embodies Pasolini's vision of life and death: unflinching, dispassionate, yet, humane and (paradoxically) impassioned.

The 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.

Although men and women are naked through out 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. When the libertines find them, they kill the guard and the maid. Salò opposes pornography in depicting sexual intercourse as pain, instead of as lust and joy. The film intentionally lacks cinematic foreplay, what erotic cinema uses to its purpose — presenting sexual acts as passionate and exciting.

In Salò every possible intrigue about sexual acts is absent. Therefore, no one feels any pleasure; the sexual relations seen might be viewed as pointless. Thus why Salò has been referred to as a film presenting the "death of sex", a "funeral dirge" of eroticism amidst of sex's mass commercialization. (Musatti 1982, 131; Chaper 1975-6, 116)

Versions

Several versions of the film exist, Salò originally ran 145 minutes, but Director Pasolini, himself, removed 25 minutes for story pace. The longest, available version is the DVD published by the BFI, containing a short scene usually deleted from other prints — during the first wedding, one of the masters quotes a Gottfried Benn poem.

In the U.S., Salò suffers intermittent legal troubles. Criterion Collection laserdisc and DVD editions were released for North America; however, the DVD was shortly withdrawn because of licensing conflicts with Pasolini's estate. Resultantly, Criterion's 1998 DVD release of the film created much collector's interest, because of its rarity — dubbed "The Rarest DVD in the world", whilst many discontinued Criterion titles are much sought, Salò original DVDs command prices ranging from $250 to $1,000 American dollars. Moreover, its rarity inspired bootleg copies sold as original pressings. Ironically, the quality of the genuine Salò DVD is inferior, by contemporary standards, most notably, the image has a green tinge.

Besides the BFI edition with the missing poetry-quotation scene (yet better than Criterion's edition), there exists a French DVD version, distributed by Gaumont Columbia Tristar Home Video, containing a transfer that is a restored, high-definition, color-corrected version of the film (superior to the Criterion and BFI editions), however, it has no English subtitles, as it is a French product for French cinemaphiles.

The Hawaii film company HK Flix released an NTSC-format Salò through distributor Euro Cult in 2007; rumour is: it contains the uncut Criterion Collection release — yet of better quality. The HK Flix edition is an NTSC version of the BFI's Salò DVD, complete with a factory imperfection at the film's 01:47:19 mark, however, its quality is unequal to that of the Gaumont DVD, and, still, it is missing a scene. The DVD cover is a sketch of Pasolini in sunglasses; Paolo Bonacelli's name is printed beside it. Moreover, despite accusations of boot-legging, Euro Cult assert their legal entitlement to distribute the Salò DVD in the U.S.

In its on-line blog, On Five, the Criterion company said, in November of 2006, that they re-acquired the distribution rights Salò. In May of 2008, Criterion released the cover art of the reissue DVD, slated for release in August of 2008, comprising two discs: (i) the movie (with an optional dubbed-English track) and (ii) two documentaries and new interviews.

Reception

Controversy

To date, Salò remains controversial, with many praising the film's fearlessness and willingness to contemplate the unthinkable, while others roundly condemn it for being little more than a pretentious exploitation movie. Salò has been banned in several countries, because of its graphic portrayals of rape and torture and murder — mainly of people thought younger than eighteen years of age. The film's legality has been questioned — namely, whether or not the actors and actresses who enacted simulated sex and violence in the film were of the age of consent.

The fact that Salò is set in a Fascist period makes many of the sadomasochistic aspects of the film more difficult to bear than in de Sade's original novel. The setting and the emphasis upon perverse consumption connects the brutality of Fascism to what Pasolini saw as the brutalizing effects of the commodification of sexuality under late capitalism.

Salò was banned in Australia in 1976, then un-banned in 1993, and then re-banned in 1998. In 1994, an undercover policeman, in Cincinnati, Ohio, rented the film from a local gay bookstore, and then arrested the owners for "pandering". A large group of artists, including Martin Scorsese and Alec Baldwin, and scholars signed a legal brief arguing the film's artistic merit; the case was dismissed on a technicality.

For a time, Salò was unavailable in many countries; it is now available, uncut, on DVD in the United Kingdom, France, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria and Germany; however, in Sweden, the film was never banned or cut.

Culturally, Salò was voted "The Most Controversial Film Ever Made" by readers in a 2006 readers' poll by Time Out magazine.

Documentaries about the film

An exhibition of photographs by Fabian Cevallos depicting scenes which were edited out of the film was displayed in 2005 in Rome.

Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Bertolucci released a documentary in 2006, Pasolini prossimo nostro, based on an interview with Pasolini done on the set of Salò in 1975. The documentary also includes photographs taken on the set of the film.

The film is also the subject of a 2001 documentary written and directed by Mark Kermode.

External links

• Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma at IMDb
• Criterion Collection essay on Salò, by John Powers
• DVD review of Salo
• Rare OOP DVDs Guide to identify original Criterion DVD.
• DVDBeaver.com Version Comparison Features, image, and sound quality comparison of the different DVD releases.
• Salo Documentary at IMDb
• Pasolini prossimo nostro at IMDb
• Film on Pasolini to debut at Venice film festival
• Pasolini, Salo, and Abu Ghraib
• Fotographie di Fabian Cevallo in mostra a Roma (in Italian)
• Quattro mostre romane per Pasolini (in Italian)