Movie #221 Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom *1975*

***WARNING***

This film contains extremely graphic content.  It is unavoidable that this review will as well. 

There are few films that have a more notorious mythos than Salo.  Made in 1975 by Peir Paolo Passolini, Salo is a film designed to shock, disgust, horrify and repulse its audience.  It seems that at sometime in the past 36 years this film has been banned in nearly every country.  Still to this day it can not be purchased in many locations.  Criterion first released this DVD and Laserdisk and then had to stop printing them.  Making these first runs collector items.

So what is so vile about Salo?  Set in Northern Italy in the Autumn of the fascists control of that region the film is about a group of libertines that kidnap 18 teenagers and force them to do revolting and degrading sexual acts.  Both to the libertines and to one another.  Interested yet?  This premise doesn't sound like anything that I would normally want to see but it also doesn't sound very different than several other movies in the genre.

What makes Salo infamous is that it pushed the limit of what was shown on screen to nearly its furthest conclusion.  It is nearly a no-holds-barred, show it all film.  These are some of the perversions that can be seen in Salo:

• Watching a man shit, then forcing a teen aged girl to eat it
• Forcing a teenage girl to pee on a man face
• Forced sodomy (both man on woman and man on man)
• Non consensual groping and penetration
• Forcing the teens not to relieve their bowls until it can all be collected at once.  The excrement is collected into a large wooden tub.  Then the teens are forced to sit naked in the waste.
• Forced oral sex
• Burning of the genital with candles
• Branding
• Physical and emotional abuse including being stripped naked and kept that way, being treated like a dog and forced to eat off the floor and being kept on a leash

The list could go on and on.  So what is the point of all this depravity?  That is a good question and one that sparks a debate among film scholars.  There are those who say that the movie is supposed to reflect the attitudes of the Fascists that ruled the area.  Apparently Passolini was raised near the area during the time of the Fascists regime and he reportedly saw what these men and their politics were like.  There are others that say that the movie is simply a provocative and antagonistic, button pushing film.  Grotesqueness for the sake of grotesqueness. And there are those that say the the film is simply pornography without any artistic merit.

I fall somewhere between the first and second camp.  I could see there there were some attempts at drawing parallels between the actions of the libertines and the Fascists ethos.  But for me those attempts fell flat.  I did find it intentionally shocking, but it is far from being without artistic ambitions.  The craft and skill of those involved is very high.  The movie looks great.  I feel like this film could have had an impact on Stanley Kubrick.  I thought often of The Shining while watching it.  Also, for the actors to put themselves in the place of these teens and the men and women torturing these teens must have been emotionally exhausting.  Considering that, the acting was superb.

I read several reviews of this film from many different people.  They all seemed totally shocked at the film and its antics.  I began wondering how jaded, numb and desensitized I am because while I was appalled at the acts taken place on the screen, I never even came close to throwing up or turning it off.  I was all set to watch this film in 2-4 attempts based on its reputation.  It is not unheard of for me to stop watching a film when I get too disgusted.  Ichi the Killer is a movie I had to shut off.  Other Takahashi Miike films have had the same impact on me too.  I remember watching Oldboy in 2 sittings.  I found that movie deeply disturbing, but also brilliant.  So I got to thinking, "How groundbreaking is this movie?" and "How shocking are the horrors in this film for its time period?". So I went on IMDB and started looking up other movies with scenes similar to those in Salo to see which came first.  Here are my findings:

1971 A Clockwork Orange - Scenes of rape and emotional punishment
1971 Straw Dogs - Brutal rape scene
1972 Pink Flamingos - Transvestite eats actual dog feces
1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre - Dismemberment and torture
1970 El Topo - Nearly every act in Salo

All these films were made 1-5 years prior to Salo and none of them have anywhere near the contempt that Salo does.  Is it that Salo put all these terrible acts into one film?  Is it the glee that the fascists seem to be taking in physically and emotional raping these teens?  Is it that the brutal acts are being heaved onto children?  I don't understand it.  If you have any opinions please, I would love to hear them.

So this is one of those films that every cinephile needs to see.  I admit that I have a hole in my viewing history for gross out stories like this.  I am trying to fill that hole.  I have watched Teeth as a primer.  Now I have Salo out of the way.  Next up is Human Centipede.  All of these are being laced with the classic horror films that I never watched as a youth when all my friends were.  Friday the 13th, Halloween, ect.  I am also picking up some of the films from the horror masters.  People like Bava and Argento.

Overall I appreciate what Salo was shooting for, I just think it fell a little short.  I thought it was well acted, and the camera was used well to create a static atmosphere.  I give Salo ★★.