Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) – voyeurs and passive purveyors of violence and obscenity

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, is available on BFI Blu-ray now.

Not all horror contains supernatural entities, serial killers or monsters who lurk under the bed. Some of the most potent gutwrenching horrors explore the human mind and our ability to embrace and enact horrendous violence under a cloak of political belief and ideological control. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, is one of those films, and it remains as unnerving now as it was at its world premiere in 1975. Salò defies simple genre labels, but one thing is for sure: it is not, despite accusations, sadomasochistic pornography. Despite the naked bodies and the sexual acts on display, Pasolini’s film rejects titillation or sexual stimulation by placing us in the role of a predatory voyeur.

In adapting the Marquis de Sade’s 18th-century novel, Pasolini would also embrace Dante’s Divine Comedy. But, to ensure Salò found a contemporary voice in modern history, Pasolini set his film in the small town of Salò, Italy. It was here, in 1944, that a corrupt interim government took control of the town following Mussolini’s rescue by the Nazis. Here, we meet a group of wealthy aristocrats and loyal party members who choose to imprison a group of the town’s young people for a vile social experiment in sex, torture and control. Opening with the sexual violation of the “Circle of Obsessions” before moving on to the “Circle of Shit” and concluding with the ritualistic torture and slaughter of the “Circle of Blood”, Salò is rooted in the depravities of human behaviour.

Salò was and still is one of the most disturbing movies ever made; it is brutal, shocking and uncomfortable as Pasolini coldly explores our human ability to debase each other in the name of pleasure and commit acts of torture and murder in the name of sport. In Paoslini’s world, all sexualities, all people and all genders have the ability to cause harm, and all are capable of tyranny. Salò is a brutal and challenging exploration of the absence of humanity, the power of political extremism, and the hidden depths of sex and control.

Pasolini was a poet, novelist, filmmaker, Marxist, artist and conflicted yet proud gay man; his filmmaking career was full of stories about religion, sex, isolation and inclusion, from The Decameron to The Arabian Nights. However, unlike many of his previous works, Salò would offer no light in the darkness as its young characters became mere toys of a vile aristocracy. Pasolini was himself in a dark place as Salò came into view, having fallen out of love with his previous works; therefore, maybe it’s no wonder that he chose to explore the corruption of power, the dying embers of belief in man and god and the darkest of human behaviours. Throughout, Salò Pasolini forces us to become voyeurs of the unfolding horror, challenging our moral boundaries as we become passive witnesses to the horror unfolding.

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, was designed to make us squirm, as it forced us to face the darkest corners of human behaviour and the role of power, privilege and wealth in subjugation, control, rape, torture and murder. It is a film that shakes us to the core due to the absence of any decency or light, as it labels us (the audience) as nothing more than voyeurs and passive purveyors of violence and obscenity. It is not a film for the faint-hearted, nor is it a film that should be watched out of mere curiosity. Salò was to be Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final film, his brutal murder on the 2nd November 1975, just weeks before the world premiere in Paris, ending a career with the darkest cinematic epitaph possible. Before his murder, Pasolini said of Salò, “I believe to give scandal is a duty, to be scandalised a pleasure, and to refuse to be scandalised is moralism.” Salò is the embodiment of these words and so much more; it is one, if not the most disturbing, film ever made because it forces us to face the inherent darkness of the human condition.