Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom [R]

In a remote chateau, four powerful libertines and Fascists exercise degrading and sadistic sexual acts upon young men and woman whom they have kidnapped. Listening the to sordid tales from aging courtesans, the libertines demonstrate how the misuse of power can lead to the murder of innocent people. 

Based on The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade, Salo is both a repulsive and a brutally clever film that puts forward strong messages and satire, but uses shocking visuals to convey these messages to the audience. Filled with nudity, murder, torture, and degradation, it was originally banned and has only recently been reintroduced to the light of day. 

In a remote chateau in the last stages of the Second World War, four powerful libertines and Fascists exercise degrading and sadistic sexual acts upon young men and women whom they have kidnapped. Listening to sordid stories from aging courtesans, the libertines brutally demonstrate how the misuse of power can lead to the murder of innocent people. 

For all the naïve excitement of the R rating, the fact that it was banned after its release, and the fact that the central content of the film is sex, Salo does not aim to stimulate its audience sexually, but to arouse strong feelings of disgust and repulsion. 

The film itself is bland, with the central characters of the libertines being rather character-less, and the story being almost non-existent. The power of the film comes in the form of the strong messages about politics, religion, and the misuse of power. What Pier Paolo Pasolini has done with this movie is put forward ideas about themes of the time; religion, the war, and politics, and brutally visualised his intended meaning by using shocking and repulsive sexual acts. This gains a repulsed response from the audience, but also causes them to think about what the filmmaker means by showing them this. For example, there is a scene where the captives of the chateau are forced to walk naked on all fours, wearing collars and chains, and beg and eat like dogs. This is a disturbing image, but it clearly puts forward the idea of superiority and inferiority. It’s all rather bleak and macabre really. 

Starring Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Pailo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, Caterina Boratto, Elsa De Girogi, Helene Surgere, and Sonia Saviange, Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom is a repulsive, but brutally clever film filled with nudity, degradation, torture, and an abundance of sadistic sexual escapades.  It’s a very dark cloud with the faintest sliver of a silver lining.