SALO (or The 120 Days of Sodom): The Criterion Collection (DVD)

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This is a review of the 2008 re-issue of Criterion´s "Salo." It retains the same spine number (#17) as the initial Criterion DVD from 1998.


So… "Salo."

Or "The 120 Days of Sodom."

Or "The movie where they all eat shit."

Pier Paolo Pasolini´s final film has a reputation that overshadows that of any other "art" film.

When the film was screened at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood several years ago, the program warned that the film would be too difficult for many viewers to watch. The warning was repeated just in case people didn´t take it seriously. Not everyone has the constitution to make it all the way through "Salo."

For many "Salo" has turned into a cult film or perhaps a rite of passage as if proving that you can watch it means you have passed the ultimate film test. Perversely enough, "Salo" has been the most highly sought-after out-of-print Criterion disc, sometimes fetching $200 on EBay. There was even a notorious fake of Criterion´s "Salo" with the wrong color ring on the inside of the disc that savvy collectors knew to avoid.

The reality of "Salo," by which I mean the reality of the act of actually watching "Salo" more or less matches its advance publicity. It is a film in which a group of beautiful young men and women are kidnapped, brought to a secluded manor, stripped naked, humiliated, forced to eat shit, and tortured to death. Sorry for the "spoiler" – you need to know.

There is not even a glimmer of redemption in "Salo." Nobody is going to save these kids. The mansion where it is set is truly a place where victims must heed the advice: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Which is not a coincidence since the film is based on the Marquis de Sade´s sado-fantasy "The 120 Days of Sodom" which, in turn, is structured loosely on Dante´s "Divine Comedy."

Pasolini consciously subverts all viewer expectations of sympathy in story-telling. In one early scene, a beautiful young girl is paraded naked before the four perverts (The Duke, The Bishop. The Magistrate, and The President) who rule this society. Her captor tells the story, intended for laughs, of how they pushed the girl´s mother into the river where she drowned. The girl falls to the ground sobbing. The four men, previously unmoved by the sight of a naked young woman, all stand, clearly aroused by her pain. Her honest expression of sorrow will only bring her more suffering.

Pasolini´s stated intention was to create a record of the true evil of fascist Italy. Salo was the name of the town where Musolini briefly set up his puppet fascist government after he was ousted from power and fled to the protection of Hitler. Kubrick once noted that the fatal flaw with "Schindler´s List" was transforming the story of the Holocaust into a heroic narrative with a happy ending. Though Pasolini´s film is not about the Holocaust, he certainly avoids this trap. For him, this was the only way, through Sade´s sick fantasy, of capturing a record of this evil legacy, one without heroism, one without redemption, one without a happy ending.

The outspoken left-wing director also has a critique of neo-capitalism on his mind, one aimed at then-contemporary Italian society as well as at 40´s fascist Italy. Human bodies become the ultimate commodity here, to be owned, abused and destroyed by their "owners" like any other piece of property than can be purchased. This critique is a bit less obvious than the fascist theme, but is the one most often written about by critics, presumably because it´s makes it easier to defend the film was worthwhile or even as a so-called "masterpiece."

Sometimes, content trumps form as well as ideology. Perhaps I am too myopic or simply too faint-hearted, but I do not see any reason to defend such a loathsome film as great art. The only convincing argument I´ve heard is that "Salo" matters simply because it exists. Fair enough. But should it exist? For me, two hours of watching young people subjected to the most grotesque forms of psychology and physical torture is too overwhelming, so damned "loud" that it drowns out any other message the film might have. It´s hard to think about Marxist ideology while watching someone´s nipples cut off.

In an odd way, "Salo" can be seen as an early blueprint for the true backbone of the Internet. The film that has been famous for its "shit feast" for the past three decades may be somewhat tamed in the "2 Girls, 1 Cup" era. The true horror of the film, however, is the dispassionate ritualistic way in which the various humiliations are conducted. The captors set up a clear set of rules of the "game" at the beginning and methodically follow them. Though they get their rocks off from time to time, they don´t appear to derive any particular pleasure from the proceedings. The torture and murder is simply the product of a dispassionate program, an inevitable outcome from the rules just like Tic-Tac-Toe always leads to a tie if played correctly. In this sense, the parallel to the fascist state is clearest ("I was only following orders") but, for my taste, was conveyed much more poignantly by the cold recitation of facts and figures in Alain Resnais´ "Night and Fog."