*Editor’s Note: This article contains descriptions of sexual abuse that some might find disturbing.
The Criterion Collection advertises itself as “a series of important contemporary and classic films.” That is an understatement. It’s more accurate to describe Criterion as a moveable museum, containing films from all over the world, preserved in gorgeous detail, unpacked with creator interviews and essays written by film scholars. The folks at Criterion have gathered a community of like-minded individuals who believe that film is art and should be treated as such.“Artists must create, critics defend, and democratic people support works so extreme that they become unacceptable even to the broadest minds of the new State.” ~Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom is one of the first films I discovered that I could not watch all of the way through. It is the most depraved and horrific film I have ever seen. I am not alone in saying this. Pasolini’s final film remains one of the most hotly debated in the history of world cinema. When I finished viewing Salo my spouse said to me, “It couldn’t have been worse than Antichrist.” I actually enjoy much of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. I don’t enjoy every moment of that film, but Salo is not capable of eliciting any enjoyment from me.
Pasolini, the Italian poet, filmmaker, intellectual, and gay political dissident, directed the 1964 film The Gospel According to St. Matthew, which has been praised for its honest portrayal of the Christ as viewed through the eyes of a homosexual and an atheist. Pasolini, a noted master of his crafts, also directed film adaptations of The Canterbury Tales (1972) and A Thousand and One Nights (1974). It is fitting, in some sense, for Salo to have been his final film. Pasolini was tragically murdered in 1975. Even his murder is hotly debated. No one knows who actually committed the crime (the question of who killed Pasolini became a film of its own in 1995).
Pasolini was known for his harsh, open criticism of the Christian Democratic Party in Italy. In Salo, Pasolini mirrors Italy’s corrupt bureaucracy through the perverse lens of the Marquis de Sade. If Pasolini was murdered by government hit men, then Salo could have been the final offense that cost him his life.
Pasolini sets Salo in 1944 Fascist Italy. The duke, the bishop, the magistrate, and the president of Italy, all shallow, homely, and impotent men, agree together that they will conduct one hundred twenty days of non-stop torture and degradation in the halls of an old villa. Eighteen male and female youth from the countryside are rounded up by armed men and ushered into the halls of the villa. They are forced to strip naked and listen to the sexually explicit stories of Signora Castelli, Signora Maggi, and Signora Vaccari. The older, heavily made up women smile and elegantly laugh as they recall stories of rape, degradation, and coprophilia at the hands of savage men. The youth weep as they anticipate the violence that awaits them.
Salo is based on de Sade, but it it takes inspiration from the Circles of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Pasolini opens with the first circle called Anteinferno in which the eighteen young men and women are subjected to constant sexual degradation. There are scenes of heterosexual and homosexual rape, public masturbation, and open coprophilia. There are entire scenes in which the duke forces the youth to eat his shit off of dinner plates. The magistrate dresses his favorite boy in a wedding dress, makes him eat shit, and then takes him to his bed to rape him on their “wedding night.”
The second circle is the Circle of Manias, the third is the Circle of Shit, and the final circle is the Circle of Blood. Every conceivable kind of degradation is committed against the youth throughout the film, until some of them “disobey” and are subjected to brutal, graphic tortures in the Circle of Blood. They are tortured and murdered by Fascist soldiers via branding, hanging, scalping, burning of genitals, and having their eyes and tongues cut out. The four bureaucrats sit and watch as voyeurs. The final shot, which I did view, is a chilling one. Following the suicide of the villa pianist, two soldiers slowly waltz together until the credits roll.
In almost every film I view, I am able to find some redeeming value, even if the film is a piece of artless trash. While viewing Salo, I felt like a horrible human being. “How can I sit and watch this?” I have never wanted to vomit during a film, but I was damn close with this one. I eventually turned it off. The film gave me nightmares. It was voted the 65th Scariest Film Ever Made by the Chicago Film Critics Association in 2006.
Pasolini’s artful eye is even missing. In The Gospel According to St. Matthew I felt like I was watching a true masterpiece. I understood why Pasolini was so highly praised. Salo is the only film I have ever seen that does not have a single redeeming quality. There is no plot. The acting is mediocre. The scenes are graphic in a way that I cannot describe. I will defend films like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, von Trier’s Antichrist and Nymphomaniac, Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, and Mike Leigh’s Naked but I cannot defend Pier Palo Pasolini’s Salo. Naomi Greene, professor of film studies at the University of California, says in her essay for Criterion, “Critics called it a ‘funeral dirge of eroticism; French philosopher Gilles Deleuze would later deem the film a ‘theorem of death.’” But perhaps the mass public understood this best: while it flocked to The Night Porter and Seven Beauties, it shunned Salo.”
I was challenged by a fellow cinephile to watch Salo because it was so horrible. He dared me to watch it. Of course, I took the challenge! I have sat through some pretty dark cinema. Clearly, I could handle this! I was wrong. I hate this film. Pasolini was, of course, challenged on every conceivable level by the Italian government when he tried to release his film. Pasolini was murdered, run over by a car several times and burned, before he could see the release of his film. When the government finally allowed Salo’s public release, it did so because they claimed it was a “work of art.” It isn’t.
I understand that Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom is an important film and that is why it is included in the Criterion Collection, but, important or not, I will never view it again. In a world and time where a United States presidential candidate can boast about sexually assaulting women, Salo is a horrific warning that men of power will take from their people until they are so degraded that they barely resemble human beings.
Be warned. Do not see this film and do not vote for men who desire power over the weak.
Joey Armstrong is a hospital chaplain from Western New York. He is also a playwright and amateur cartoonist. Follow him on Twitter @chaplainmystic and Medium, where he writes more reviews for film and television.
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