Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Borstalboy
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/9/04
#1Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 3:22pm
Brilliant? Disgusting? Boring? All three? One of the Criterion Collection's first releases makes a reappearance on DVD after 10 years.
From The Onion:
Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 opus Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom was one of Criterion's first DVD releases back in 1998, but the title quickly went out of print, and in the decade since, secondhand copies of Salò have sometimes commanded upward of a thousand dollars. But in a way, Salò is a movie that should be distributed under the counter. Pasolini marries the perverse visions of the Marquis de Sade with the decadence of Italy's fascist era, trapping the audience in a ritzy Italian mansion with an assortment of naked young people and the coolly philosophical aristocrats who torment them. The movie comments on the degradation of the human spirit by subjecting its characters to some of the most nauseating sexual encounters ever simulated on film. SH*T is eaten. Tongues are severed, eyeballs are gouged out, genitals burn. In the words of the movie's authority figures, "All's good if it's excessive."
Salò emerged from an era thick with Eurosleaze, in which drive-ins and arthouses alike programmed "the erotic adventures of so-and-so"—many of those films inspired by Pasolini's own racy adaptations of The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. With Salò, Pasolini looked to negate the giggly titillation of the times by reducing the body to a container for foul fluid, and presenting desire as something base and easily manipulated. As the fascist experiment plays out in Salò, the slaves begin to inform on each other, and to take a certain measure of satisfaction in their captors' attention; meanwhile, those captors keep finding it harder to control their rage, or their dissatisfaction with what they've wrought.
In other contexts, Salò's heavy-handed allegory might seem like overkill, but this a movie predicated on directness. Whenever the progression of depravity threatens to get dull—and it does get dull—Pasolini either goes one step further into the darkness, or he makes a simple stylistic switch by going to a handheld camera, or shooting from a distance. The changes keep viewers disoriented, like the soundtrack's subtle shifts from light big-band music to the rumble of war as the world goes to hell just outside the estate. Throughout, Pasolini keeps asking the audience, "Which side would you rather be on?" And the hell of it is, he doesn't offer many choices.
Key features: More than two hours of documentaries about the making of the film and the repulsion it still provokes.
A.V. Club Rating: B+
Roscoe
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/15/03
#2re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 3:26pmSaw it years ago, haven't felt the need to revisit it. I just never saw the point.
#2re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 3:39pmRoscoe pretty much summed up my reaction.
#3re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 4:06pm
I think it was in the mid 70's when I saw it. Most of my friends at that time glorified it but I was the lone dissenter saying it was too gross. I thought it was distasteful, to say the least.
But that was the same time period I started watching John Waters' films and absolutely loved them.
FindingNamo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/22/03
#5re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 7:30pmI saw it in a gay/les film festival in the very early '80s. More lesbian walkouts than the end of a 12-step meeting back then.
#6re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 7:49pmI have heard about this film for years. Question for those who have seen it. By today's standards where nothing is really shocking in violence or sex, how does it compare? Would it shock audiences even today? I have seen some films that were considered so extreme at the time and is almost laughable today. Only film that comes to mind that shocks me to this day is Pink Flamingos and one of John Waters other films.
#7re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 7:55pm
I wouldn't compare Salos to the Waters films, since they're gross in a different way, and are meant to be funny.
Did you see Hostel? I'd put Salo more into that category.
FindingNamo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/22/03
#8re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 8:01pmWell, Hostel is torture porn. Salo is anti-fascist allegory.
#9re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 8:10pm
I didn't refine the categorization that far. I reacted in a similar way to both Salo and Hostel. Repulsed.
Most people react to the Waters films with hysterical laughing.
FindingNamo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/22/03
#10re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 8:15pmBeacuse the Waters movies are comedies. The Passolini films are very layered. Hostel is flat.
#11re: Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom
Posted: 9/3/08 at 8:46pmI wonder if I'd react differently to Salo if I saw it now. 30 years ago is a long time. I've been subjected to a lot since then.
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