Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
| Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma | |
|---|---|
| File:SaloDVDCover.jpg | |
| Directed by | Pier Paolo Pasolini |
| Written by | Pier Paolo Pasolini Sergio Citti starring = Paolo Bonacelli Giorgio Cataldi Umberto P. Quintavalle Aldo Valletti Franco Merli |
| Produced by | Alberto Grimaldi |
| Music by | Ennio Morricone |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
Release dates | 30 January, 1976 |
Running time | 117 min. |
| Language | Italian |
Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom) is a 1976 film by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the book The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade.
Pasolini's Biography
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 movement of location.
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 metaphoric; 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-stretching, 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 (1955), 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
Salò (as the film is commonly abbreviated) is set in the Republic of Salò, the Fascist rump state which was set up in the German-occupied portion of Italy in 1944. The film is divided into four segments that loosely parallel Dante's Inferno: Anteinferno, Circle of Manias, Circle of Shit and Circle of Blood.
Four men of power, referred to as 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 young male collaborators, they kidnap eighteen young men and women (nine male, nine female), and take them to a palace near Marzabotto. With them are four middle-aged prostitutes, also collaborators, whose function will be to recount various arousing stories for the men of power, and who will in turn exploit their victims sexually and sadistically.
The film depicts the three days spent at the palace, during which time the four men of power devise increasingly abhorrent tortures and humiliations for their own pleasure. In one of the film's most infamous scenes, a young woman is forced to eat the feces of the Duke; later, the other victims are presented with a giant meal of human feces (the "feces" were created with chocolate sauce and orange marmalade). At the end of the three days, the victims who chose not to collaborate with their tormentors are murdered in various gruesome ways: scalping, branding, having tongues (see also Franco Merli) and eyes cut out.
The film's treatment of sexuality
One of the most common threads throughout Salò is the all too true reality of consumer culture’s restraints. Throughout the film the human body is turned into something of lesser value. There is no such thing as a private sexual encounter throughout the film, and if there is, it is quickly shared with the rest of the cast of characters.
Much of the film lacks what most erotic cinema ultimately uses towards its purpose, which could be viewed as "cinematic foreplay": making sexual acts seems either passionate or exciting.
In Salò every single bit of possible intrigue involving the sexual acts is utterly and completely absent. Therefore, no one obtains any type of pleasure, and the acts could be viewed as almost completely pointless. This could be why Salò has been referred to as a film which presents the "death of sex" or a "funeral dirge" of eroticism in the midst of its mass commercialization (Musatti 1982, 131; Chapier 1975-6, 116).
Controversy
Controversy over the film exists to this day, with many praising the film for its fearlessness and willingness to contemplate the unthinkable, while others condemn it roundly for being little more than a pretentious exploitation movie.
The film has been banned in several countries due to its graphic portrayals of rape, torture and murder—mainly that of people suspected to be younger than 18 years of age. Many questions about the film's legality have been raised—namely, whether or not the actors and actresses that participate in the (admittedly simulated) sexual or violent acts in the film were of the age of consent.
Since Salò deals primarily with homosexual activity, much of the criticism facing its release stemmed from the majority of the general public's distate for what it considers homosexual perversity . For the same reason the film has gained a loyal following in the homosexual community.
Some critics have argued that Salò embodies Pasolini’s lust for young boys to be willing participants in sexual acts. But mostly Salò is about uniting all of Pasolini’s ideas involving sex, religion and politics into a uniquely cohesive whole; the four libertines represent a monstrous, apolitical power that consumes and degrades all that it touches.
The fact that Salò was set in a Nazi-Fascist period makes much of the sadomasochistic aspects of the film even harder to bear than in the original novel. This setting and the emphasis on perverse consumption connects the brutality of Fascism to what Pasolini saw as the brutalizing effects of the commodification of sexuality under late capitalism.
It was banned in Australia in 1976, unbanned in 1993 and rebanned in 1998 [1][2]. In 1994, an undercover police officer in Cincinnati, OH, rented the film at a local gay bookstore, then arrested the proprietors for pandering. A large group of artists, including Martin Scorsese and Alec Baldwin, and scholars signed onto a brief arguing the film's artistic merits. Eventually, the case was thrown out on a technicality. [3]
For a time the film was unavailable in many countries, although it is now available uncut on DVD in the United Kingdom, France, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden and Italy.
See also banned films.
Versions
Several versions of the film exist. The film originally ran approximately 145 minutes, but Pasolini himself removed 25 minutes to help the pacing. The longest available version is the widely sold DVD from the BFI, which features a short scene usually missing from other prints -- during the first wedding ceremony, one of the masters quotes a poem by Gottfried Benn.
The film has run into intermittent legal trouble in the United States. Criterion Collection laserdisc and DVD editions were released for North America; the DVD is now out of print due to conflicts with Pasolini's estate over the licensing to the film.
The Criterion Collection release of the film in 1998 on DVD has created a great deal of interest because of its rarity. It is so rare that it has been labelled by some to being possibly the rarest DVD in the world. Shortly after the Criterion edition was released, the rights for the DVD were not renewed by its distributor and Criterion were forced to discontinue the title, as they have done in the past with some of the films in their catalogue. Whilst many of Criterion's discontinued titles have became much sought after, Salò has generally seen prices for an original copy range from as little as US $250 to US $1000. Due to the rarity of the title many bootleg copies are routinely passed off as originals.
Ironically, despite all this, the quality of the DVD is quite inferior by today's standards. In addition to the widely available BFI edition (which is somewhat better than the Criterion edition and includes an additional missing scene), there is also a French version distributed by Gaumont Columbia Tristar Home Video which features a restored high definition transfer and color correction, and is vastly superior to both the Criterion and BFI versions. However, it lacks English subtitles.
The rights to distribute the film in the USA (and through most of the rest of the world) appear to be held by MGM / Sony.
Notes
External links
- Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma at IMDb
- Rare OOP DVD's Guide to identify original Criterion DVD.
- Criterion Collection essay by John Powers
- Review of «Salo or the 120 days of Sodom»
- DVDBeaver.com Version Comparison Features, image, and sound quality comparison of the different DVD releases.