metalluk's Full Review: Salo, Or The 120 Days of Sodom
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
WARNING: THE FILM REVIEWED HERE IS BOTH GRAPHICALLY VIOLENT AND EXPLICITLY PORNOGRAPHIC. THIS REVIEW CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE NECESSARY TO MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION OF THE CONTENT AND ISSUES OF THE FILM.
Salò is a film that many viewers understandably find repulsive. Unfortunately, that sense of disgust is precisely what causes the vast majority of us to divert our gaze from the instances of sadistic behavior occurring in real life, every day, in many different places around the world, and that, in turn, allows its continuation. It's not the film that should disgust us but what it says about the human condition.
Historical Background: Director Pier Paolo Pasolini is a controversial figure in cinema. After Pasolini's Totò period (1966-67), his mythic films (Oedipus Rex (1967) and Medea (1970)), and his so-called "difficult" films (Teorema (1968) and Porcile (1969)), he turned to literary adaptations. Three of these, Il Decamerone (1971), The Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights (1974), consisting of soft-core erotic films, became known as the "Trilogy of Life." Pasolini later publicly renounced the trilogy and directed, as an antithesis, his final film, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). This was Pasolini's last film because he was brutally murdered by a young male prostitute shortly after Salò's release.
Salò was and is a highly controversial film and is still banned in many countries throughout the world. It is based on a manuscript written by the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) who was even more controversial than Pasolini. Born Donatien Alphonse François Sade in Paris, he served as a cavalry officer in the Seven Years' War from 1756 to 1763, but as early as his twenties, he exhibited signs of mental instability and cruelty. He spent almost half of his life in prison, from 1768-1803. While in prison, he wrote essays, plays, short stories, and novels. His works are often simultaneously brilliant, unconventional, and highly obscene. Among the best known of his works published during his lifetime were Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue (1791) and Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795). Today, he is most remembered for a work published almost a century posthumously, 120 Days of Sodom. The Marquis de Sade composed this work on a roll of paper during 1784/5 while he was imprisoned in The Bastille. The manuscript was stolen during the sacking of the Bastille in 1789 and somehow made its way into the possession of the Marquis de Villeneuve-Trans. A censored version of the story was first published in 1904 and the full version in 1935. De Sade's main thesis, in his works, was that cruelty and sexual perversity are fundamental human traits and a natural part of human behavior. De Sade's viewpoint represents the ultimate in moral relativism. "There is nothing either fundamentally good, nor anything fundamentally evil;" he writes. "Everything is relative, relative to our point of view." De Sade lent his name to the word "sadism," which means "deriving morbid enjoyment (and especially sexual pleasure) from inflicting physical pain and humiliation."
The Story: There are four segments to this film, each introduced by a title card. The opening part is called "Antechamber of Hell." Adolescent boys and girls are being rounded up and kidnapped by Fascist agents working for a foursome of powerful men. These men, who are The Duke (Paolo Bonacelli), The Bishop (Giorgio Cataldi), The Magistrate (Umberto Paolo Quintavalle), and The President (Aldo Valletti), have designed a set of rules of living that emphasize unrestrained pursuit of sadistic impulses. Each takes as a wife the daughter of one of the others, so that they are all bound together. These old men closely examine the adolescent virgins, selecting the nine most appealing of each gender, whisking them away to a remote castle for their sadistic exploitation.
The second segment is entitled "Circle of Obsessions." In a large ballroom, Signora Vaccari (Hélène Surgère), an aging prostitute, regales the men, adolescents, and guards with erotic tales of debauchery, such as her first encounter with a man's penis at age seven. The stories are intended to arouse the men and "educate" the youngsters. When the stories have their desired effect, the men periodically fondle one or more of the adolescents nearby or force the children to fondle them. Sometimes one of the men leaves the room with one or another of the teens. There are scenes of urination, anal sex, beatings, cross-dressing, and other fetishes. In one scene, the naked teens are made to crawl on all fours, to eat from a dog bowl, bark, and beg.
The third segment, the "Circle of Shit," is more scatological that sexual. Several of the youths are forced to eat feces! Many viewers quite naturally find this part of the film especially revolting. At other times, the youths are required to collect their feces in bowls. The "mistress-of-ceremony" for this segment is Signora Maggi (Sonia Saviange). The four libertines continue to take gleeful delight in the proceedings.
The final segment, the "Circle of Blood," is the most perverse of all. The mistress-of-ceremony here is Signora Castelli (Caterina Boratto). There is one kind of extreme violence after another. A young couple who have snuck off together to have conventional sex are shot dead for the transgression. The youngsters who have violated any of the bizarre rules have their names entered into the punishment book, but sometimes rat out one another for a more serious violation, in order to escape their own punishment. One adolescent is beaten to death, several whipped, one has his tongue cut out, another an eye gouged out, and one is raped and then hung. We see the flame of a candle applied to nipples and genitalia. One girl is scalped. The sadistic men observe most of these events from a comfortable distance, through binoculars. The film ends with an artsy scene involving two of the guards dancing together, gently, one asking the other the name of his girlfriend.
Themes: The range of viewpoints among reviewers in relation to this film is enormous. Most reviewers acknowledge that the performances among the adults are outstanding, the sets impressive, and the photography quite effective. Even after such concessions for the production values, most reviewers still condemn the film as nearly worthless. The noteworthy complaints include (a) disgusting content, (b) an exploitive quality; (c) one dimensional characters (especially the youth); (d) an inadequately developed political message; and (e) general pointlessness or an excessive hammering on a single point. Let's consider some of those charges.
Is this film disgusting? Sadism is disgusting – at least for the vast majority of people. The Marquis de Sade believed that the capacity for sadistic acts is inherent in each of us, given the opportunity to exercise unlimited power over another person (or animal). One of the sadistic men gleefully informs the youngsters, "You are beyond the reach of any legality." What I personally find disgusting is not the depictions in this film but the fact that every one of these atrocities has occurred or is occurring thousands of times over, all around the world. Pasolini was motivated to make Salò because of his personal experience with the thuggery of the Fascists in northern Italy near the end of World War II. He could just as well have been motivated by the Stalinist purges in Russia (see, for example, Burnt By the Sun), the killing fields in Cambodia (see The Killing Fields), the Nazi death camps, the systematic torture of Algerians by the French (see The Battle of Algiers), the massacre of frontier settlers by native Americans or vice versa, the atrocities of Vietnam, the genocidal wars in Africa, or American-sponsored atrocities in Nicaragua, Guatemala, or Iraq. Take your choice! Personally, I would sit through this rather unpleasant film, Salò, a thousand times if that activity could spare one person from being subjected to torture or sadism.
Sadistic tendencies are part of the subconscious capacity of most human beings, but the ability to suppress those tendencies is usually a part of each person's character and conscious oversight. Denying our sadistic impulses is fraught with danger. We need, instead, to learn how to keep those impulses in check. Presently, on the internet, you can access pictures of Iraqi detainees being tortured by American service personnel at Guatánamo Bay and in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (where Saddam Hussein previously tortured his enemies). Go to Google, for example, and search for "Abu Ghraib." The photographs are as disgusting as anything in Salò. Ask yourself, "Is it the posting of the photographs on the internet that is disgusting or the fact that this torture is going on?" The posting of the photographs is not at all disgusting. It is both courageous and morally the right thing to do because it may possibly reduce the incidence of these horrendous crimes. Salò is not disgusting. What is disgusting is that it is accurately depicting an element of human nature that is all too often unbridled.
Is this film exploitive? To me, the term "exploitive," in relation to the media, means using prurient or sensational material under the guise of artistic freedom or informing the public, when the real motivation is personal gain, such as increasing television ratings, increasing newspaper subscriptions, or selling books or movies. The dissemination of images or information about instances of human victimization can be either exploitive or non-exploitive. It is obvious to me that Pasolini did not milk this material for its prurient potential. The sadistic acts are presented in such a way as to be nauseating and disgusting, not erotic or titillating. The sexual elements of the film are not even graphic by today's standards.
One of the central themes of Salò is the same as Chabrol's main point in Story of Women: "The worst horrors in history were not perpetrated by the greatest rogues in history, but by the weak and cowardly." The four sadistic men in Salò could not continue their system of perversions without the tacit acceptance of their wives, the guards, and the prostitutes. These intermediary categories of participants neither take delight in the sadistic activities nor oppose them. They simply watch passively. That they are one-dimensional characters is precisely the point. They are so poorly self-directed that they sheepishly follow the lead of the powerful and perverted men – just as many Germans acquiesced to the rise of Hitler. Like Chabrol, Pasolini condemns the cowardly characters that allow the rogues to prosper. Here in America, our freedom of information gives us less excuse. We have access to pictures of torture that was expressly authorized by the Bush administration yet the majority of us reelected the torturers. Pasolini implicates his viewers in the passivity that allows sadistic murderers to flourish. Like the sadistic men in the film who watch the scenes of torture from a distance through binoculars, we watch Salò (or, worse, shun it or censor it) or look at photographs on the internet or nightly news broadcasts, and then either forget about it or implicitly endorse what we've seen by reelecting those who ordered the torture sessions.
Critics argue that Salòfails to truly make its political point. The sadists, they say, are only incidentally Fascists and the film fails to establish any firm link between the two notions. These critics are missing the film's political point. It's not simply that Fascists exhibited elements of sadism. It's that every group of humans and most individual humans are capable of sadistic behavior – when we permit our more noble inclinations to snooze or vanish. In Salò, the sadists are motivated by their sense of class superiority, but the issues are the same when the motivation is political or economic dominance. Pasolini merely offered Fascism as an example rather than a special case. Pasolini wants us to stand up and be counted in fighting against sadistic activities, each in our own time and place.
Consider, for a moment, the following seven disgusting descriptions:
1. A naked young man covered in feces is ordered by a club-wielding man to walk a straight line with his ankles handcuffed.
2. An imprisoned girl is made to urinate on a man's face. Another is made to eat feces.
3. Under the direction of a guard, a ferocious, snarling dog confronts a terrified, naked young man.
4. Naked youths are piled together in obscene juxtapositions.
5. A naked young man is chained to a ring in the floor for eight hours a day in freezing cold and later has one arm and a toe amputated due to frostbite.
6. Naked youths are placed on leashes and forced to imitate dogs.
7. A young man is made to squat for twelve hours with hands shackled between his legs. If he falls over the chains will cut into his arms.
Can you tell which of the above are from Salò and which describe documented events supervised by Americans at either Guatánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib? Only items two and six above are from Salò. The rest are your tax dollars at work – or at least those of you paying taxes here in the U.S.A. The Washington Post reported in April 2003 that officials at the highest levels of the Defense and Justice Departments had approved a list of twenty interrogation techniques that included sleep cycle reversal, heat or cold exposure, or sensory assault (loud music or bright strobe lights). An article in the Wall Street Journal in June 2004 reported that Rumsfeld had approved limiting food, denying clothing, body-cavity searches, sleep deprivation, and shackling in "stress positions."
Does Salò have a point to make? Yes. It depicts the level of perversity of which humans are capable and the role that the public's passivity and tacit acceptance plays in allowing evil to flourish. I can't think of two other points that are any more important for a film to make. My principal reservation about this film (and the only reason I'm giving it just four-stars) is that its message is lost on the majority of viewers because of the emotional intensity of its content and images.
Production Values:Salò is well-paced and builds to a crescendo in the levels of debauchery that it depicts. It follows the source material reliably except for the Fascist association at the beginning and the cutesy artistic touch at the very end. The special effects are mostly very good – more realistic, overall, than most people are going to be able to stomach.
I haven't mentioned yet that all of this gruesome debauchery and violence takes place to rather bizarre musical accompaniment. A pianist bangs out snappy dancehall tunes and dirges on the ballroom piano. Other times, we hear the sound of big bands on the phonograph. The cinematography is nicely stylized, almost surreal, at times. It's hard to focus on the images, given the gruesome content, but when I noticed, I was struck by the contrast between the beauty of the images and the horror of the activities. As usual, Pasolini relied mainly on natural lighting.
Paolo Bonacelli is outstanding as The Duke. His other work includes notably Midnight Express (1978), Caligula (1979), and Night on Earth (1992). Aldo Valletti was very creepy as The President. I thought the performance by Hélène Surgère as Signora Vaccari the highlight of the film.
Bottom-Line: This is a difficult-to-watch film but all the more so because all that it depicts and more goes on in real life every day somewhere in the world. Salò is not about Pasolini's perverse and overactive imagination or even that of the Marquis de Sade. It is about the human condition. We all need to be a good deal less concerned about what is depicted in this film and a good deal more concerned about the all too similar events occurring everyday in real life. We are indeed the passive public at whom Pasolini is directing his principal message. The Criterion release of Salò makes the uncut version of the film available for the first time in America, in a high quality transfer (with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1). The film is in Italian with English subtitles and has a running time of 112 minutes.
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