On November 2nd, 1975, on a beach at Ostia, Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered. His body was found partially burned with gasoline, apparently ran over with his own car, and his genitals mutilated by what seemed to be a metal bar. To this day, it is believed Pasolini was assassinated. The man who confessed to the murder then retracted that confession in 2005, alleging he only made it because of threats to this family. Likely killed by the mob, the director’s death could’ve been for a number of reasons. Wether it was for his communist beliefs, his sexuality, his critical stance against growing consumerist culture, or his complicated relationship with catholic faith, the director was a multi-faceted artist that displeased a lot of people.
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Three weeks after the events of his death, what would be his final film premiered in Paris, showcasing acts of brutality far beyond the ones surrounding his demise The film to this day is still a shocking polemic. The film is none other than Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, an adaptation of Marquis De Sade’s 1875 novel The 120 Days of Sodom, with its setting changed to World War II Northern Italy during fascist occupation.
The film technically marked a departure from his earlier work, featuring little variety of angles and framing, almost no camera movement, and a plotless story. It’s a sad fact that due to its strong imagery and reputation, many only know Pasolini for this film, leaving a body of work that included more than ten feature films, poetry, playwriting, books, and a political career lying in the background. Despite all that, Salò could very well be one of Pasolini’s best films, transcending any art house or horror status, and here’s why.
The Plot of Salò Shows Abuse as a Metaphor for Power
United Artists
Four corrupt fascist libertines round up nine teenage boys and girls and subject them to four months of sadism. They torture the youths for their own pleasure, in practices ranging from psychological hampering, extreme violence, physical and sexual abuse, coprophilia, and many other unspeakable barbarities.
Pasolini began developing the film along with his writing collaborator Sergio Citti, who was originally attached to direct the project. During the writing process Pasolini felt urged to translate the story from 18th century France to the Republic of Salò (toponymic name given to Mussolini’s puppet state of Nazi Germany in the late days of World War II). By doing so, the film allegorizes to power beyond any particular setting, and is a direct jab to Italy’s own history with fascism.
Pasolini saw sadomasochism as an enduring trait of humanity, that happened during Sade’s era and his present. Thus, sex here becomes a metaphor for the relationship of power between the oppressor and the oppressed. Sade’s masochism has a purpose that is to represent what power inflicts upon the body. He called this the “anarchy of power,” as power does whatever it wants; it holds an arbitrary nature that is dictated by economic needs eluding common logic.
For Pasolini, power manipulates the body, and then takes consciousness out by establishing false and self-alienating values dictated by consumerism and the commodification of those inflicting it upon people. The subjugated teenagers are a metaphor to Italy’s youth being corrupted by global consumerism, which is allegorized through the libertines.
Pasolini and the Nonexistence of History
Pasolini also felt the film is essentially about the non-existence of history. By this he means, that the film intends to show the nullity of understanding history as progressive process, as humanity is bound to social practices that regardless of its epoch, will continue to appear.
For the director, violence and fascism are not bound to a moment in history, neither is anything that happens in the film. Its temporality is not explored at all, it happens in the confines of one secluded location where everything is eventually coded and imposed. In Salò, history is nothing, and power is everything.
Salò Critiques Fascism and Modern Leftist Movements
By 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini was a conflicting figure not only for far-right fascism (which he vehemently opposed), but also within leftist circles. He had harshly criticized the 1968 revolts, as he felt they came from petit-bourgeois individuals who were merely taking ownership of a class struggle they did not comprehend. He also had shifted from various political parties and had a non-dogmatic take on Marxism that at times was seen as contradictory. In one key scene of the film, his disenchantment with what he felt was bourgeois leftism is shown through the fascists.
Technically distant from the rest of the film, as it involves camera movement and rotation through a room where the libertines are drinking after abusing the teenagers, they are found discussing what they initially believe is Baudelaire, to later be agreed upon that it was Nietzsche. At that moment, fascists take on the dialectical qualities and common language associated with left-wing intellectuals.
They engage in an intellectual justification of themselves and their acts, which for them are not the ones of degenerates, but of sophisticated and liberated men of culture. Pasolini here makes a clear statement on what he felt was the dark side of sexual liberation, setting how hypocritical it is for leftist intellectuals to validate their own selfish desires through “high” forms of speech.
Though a clear jab at his political contemporaries and comrades, Pasolini does not lurk on this and through most of the film ridicules the fascists portraying what he believes to be the hypocrisies within their ideology. The four men have no regard for the moralistic creed that is typically associated with fascism. The “deviances” in society they so fervently are opposed against are perfectly fine if performed by them. Here its accepted that they engage in gay sex, go around in drag, show their bottoms off, have human feces for dinner, or have people urinate on them. Overall, this is the director’s take on what he truly believes is the nature of authoritarian figures.
Influence of Salò
Few films have achieved such outrage as this one. It wasn’t until almost a decade ago that Salò managed to be widely available in various territories. The film’s overly graphical depiction of hideous acts towards minors is to this day subject of controversy and anger. Film critics like Roger Ebert never saw the film, others could not even finish it, and others have rued the day they did. Despite all this negative press, filmmakers like Martin Scorsese or Gaspar Noé have championed it and deemed it as a transcendental piece of movie history. Scorsese himself signed a legal brief arguing of its artistic merit when a police officer went undercover to a local gay bookstore to rent it and arrested the owners.
Still present in all-time lists of the most devious films that will make you sick to your stomach, Salò has inspired extreme subgenres of horror (like so-called ’torture porn’) and legitimized some of them as auteur productions. Films like Saw, Hostel, and the banned A Serbian Film still owe Pasolini’s film a great debt as it stands as one of the firsts to show extreme violence with no filters. Behind its gruesome exterior, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is a quintessential piece of motion picture history, a perturbing yet accurate study of power relationships in society.
