Relocating the Marquis de Sade’s notorious novel, 120 Days of Sodom, to wartime Italy – specifically the short-lived Republic of Salò, where Mussolini made a last stand at the end of World War II – this film has become synonymous with sexual deviance and bestial violence.
Yet, Pier Paolo Pasolini had loftier ambitions than simply shocking the critics who thought his work obscene.
If you manage to block out the infamous events in the film to such an extent that you consciously perceive the set design, camerawork, and staging, you experience an aesthetically sophisticated masterpiece full of visual compositions that would do credit to the old masters of the Italian Renaissance.
The plot here is brutishly simple: a group of fascist dignitaries hole up in a remote castle, intent on enacting their unspeakably heinous fantasies using a group of attractive young captives of both sexes, subjecting them to a series of sexual tortures and humiliations.
But the action is, in fact, a political metaphor, with each of the men representing a social pillar that had delivered the nation into the hands of the Fascists – the law, the merchants, the aristocracy and the church.
The film contains some of the most nauseating sexual encounters ever simulated on film.
Shit is eaten. Tongues are severed, eyeballs are gouged out, genitals burn . . . but degradation is often viewed from a distance or allowed to continue off-screen, part of Pasolini’s strategy for making the audience uncomfortably aware of its own passivity. So devastating, it’s almost unwatchable.
The film concludes with images of torture and execution; there is no redemption – such as a rescue by the Allies – to put an end to the horror.
Yet the final scene shows two young guards tuning the radio to dance music.
The guards begin to dance with one another while chatting about their girlfriends. This seemingly innocuous conclusion is perhaps the film’s most harrowing aspect. It is foreshadowed in all the scenes where the soldiers carry out their orders unmoved – indeed, often even taking pleasure in doing so.
The female pianist (Sonia Saviange) – who accompanies the whores on the piano but also performs actively on one occasion – serves a similar function. She otherwise shows no emotion, yet in the end, she throws herself out of the window.
All is set to the music of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, which Pasolini considered Fascist music, and a reading of the Cantos of Ezra Pound, the American poet who supported Mussolini.
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini did not live to see the film’s premiere. He was brutally murdered in November 1975 – allegedly by a male prostitute – with his mutilated and disfigured body discovered on the beach near the shantytown at Ostia. He was just 51.
To this day, the case remains unresolved.
The Duke
Paolo Bonacelli The Bishop
Giorgio Cataldi Chief Magistrate
Uberto Paulo Quintavalle The President
Aldo Valletti Signora Castelli
Caterina Boratto Signora Vaccari
Hélène Surgère Signora Maggi
Elsa De Giorgi The Pianist
Sonia Saviange
Shit is eaten. Tongues are severed, eyeballs are gouged out, genitals burn . . . but degradation is often viewed from a distance or allowed to continue off-screen, part of Pasolini’s strategy for making the audience uncomfortably aware of its own passivity. So devastating, it’s almost unwatchable.
