Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom
Year: 1975
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Uberto Paolo Quintavalle & Aldo Velletti
Runtime: 116 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 19/01/23
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Uberto Paolo Quintavalle & Aldo Velletti
Runtime: 116 mins
BBFC: 18
Published: 19/01/23
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1975 art-horror film, Salo, Or The 120 Days of Sodom, is a film I have had on my radar for a very long time. As a lover of the macabre, disturbing, and downright controversial, Salo was always a film I had looked at with a kind of reverence for it having the kind of reputation that it has. Considered by many to be one of the most disgusting and disturbing films of all time, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy of the film earlier this year and had been waiting for the right time to kick back and enjoy some sadistic torture. But upon finishing Salo I now find myself in the peculiar position of having gone into this film for exactly the wrong reasons. Was it disturbing? Oh yeah it was. But did I have fun with it in the same way I do with other films of this nature? Not at all. It turns out that I was completely unprepared for the kind of film that Salo is beyond its nasty reputation.
Set during the final days of Mussolini’s regime in World War II Italy, Salo depicts four wealthy male libertines that kidnap and enslave eighteen teenagers before subjecting them to four months of violence, sadism, sexual, and psychological torture. During this time, they discuss at length what they seek to learn from this ritual, and their personal beliefs into what is considered morally and ethically acceptable behaviour from their victims.
Set during the final days of Mussolini’s regime in World War II Italy, Salo depicts four wealthy male libertines that kidnap and enslave eighteen teenagers before subjecting them to four months of violence, sadism, sexual, and psychological torture. During this time, they discuss at length what they seek to learn from this ritual, and their personal beliefs into what is considered morally and ethically acceptable behaviour from their victims.
Before going nay further into this review I must clarify that I went into Salo expecting a film that sought to depict the most graphic and disturbing imagery that could be put to celluloid; instead I was presented with a curiously thoughtful and academic analysis of violence and the corruptibility of absolute power. I needed to address this because I didn’t enjoy Salo, and that’s likely because it wasn’t the blood, guts, and sexploitation film I had been led to believe that it was from the ‘most disturbing films of all time’ lists I have frequently seen the film on. I didn’t like Salo because I wasn’t adequately prepared for it, but would I change my mind on a second viewing now knowing what kind of film it really is? Also probably not, there’s a lot of creative decisions that just didn’t click with me, but that doesn’t mean that someone prepared for what Salo truly is wouldn’t be able to thoroughly enjoy it.
The biggest issue I have with Salo is the way it has been constructed from a technical perspective, most notably the audio. Like many of its contemporaries, Salo was shot without sound, and all of it was added in post-production. This of course means that actors need to record their lines in a sound booth and have it layered on top of the image. This process isn’t uncommon, as even today many big budget films need actors to come back in to re-record dialogue, but it’s an easy thing to mess up. Almost every single line of dialogue in Salo is out of sync with the actors lips, and the line delivery often feels wrong when you factor in the actors body language. Some actors refused to return for the audio recording, meaning that other people have had to record their lines and it’s incredibly jarring to witness. My Blu-Ray copy of the film comes with the original Italian language film, and the English language dub. Approximately thirty minutes into the film I switched from Italian to English because if the audio wasn’t going to sync up with the lips and sound wrong anyway I might as well do it without bothering with subtitles. I can’t even begin to describe how much it took me out of the experience hearing a someone belly laugh whilst their character on screen simply smiled, and that was in the original Italian audio, and it created such a disconnect between me and the film.
To make this disconnect greater, Salo is framed in a very clinical and practical way. The film basks in wide shots that allow the actors to move around the frame as if it were a stage. Rarely does it get up close and personal, meaning that when the more depraved acts start to appear you’re so far away from it that you fail to feel the level of shock or disgust I had been expecting. Because of the sterility of the visuals, its rarely the act that’s disgusting or disturbing, but rather the way that the libertines react to these acts. A stark contrast to something like A Serbian Film (closest film I could think of in terms of content) where the brutal acts of sexual violence are what is horrifying, in Salo these acts are not horrifying but rather the context that surrounds them.
The biggest issue I have with Salo is the way it has been constructed from a technical perspective, most notably the audio. Like many of its contemporaries, Salo was shot without sound, and all of it was added in post-production. This of course means that actors need to record their lines in a sound booth and have it layered on top of the image. This process isn’t uncommon, as even today many big budget films need actors to come back in to re-record dialogue, but it’s an easy thing to mess up. Almost every single line of dialogue in Salo is out of sync with the actors lips, and the line delivery often feels wrong when you factor in the actors body language. Some actors refused to return for the audio recording, meaning that other people have had to record their lines and it’s incredibly jarring to witness. My Blu-Ray copy of the film comes with the original Italian language film, and the English language dub. Approximately thirty minutes into the film I switched from Italian to English because if the audio wasn’t going to sync up with the lips and sound wrong anyway I might as well do it without bothering with subtitles. I can’t even begin to describe how much it took me out of the experience hearing a someone belly laugh whilst their character on screen simply smiled, and that was in the original Italian audio, and it created such a disconnect between me and the film.
To make this disconnect greater, Salo is framed in a very clinical and practical way. The film basks in wide shots that allow the actors to move around the frame as if it were a stage. Rarely does it get up close and personal, meaning that when the more depraved acts start to appear you’re so far away from it that you fail to feel the level of shock or disgust I had been expecting. Because of the sterility of the visuals, its rarely the act that’s disgusting or disturbing, but rather the way that the libertines react to these acts. A stark contrast to something like A Serbian Film (closest film I could think of in terms of content) where the brutal acts of sexual violence are what is horrifying, in Salo these acts are not horrifying but rather the context that surrounds them.
In Salo the majority of the characters do not have names, and the overwhelming majority of the victims don’t even have dialogue. The structure of the story usually involves a prostitute by the name of Signora Castelli (Caterina Boratto) describing depraved sexual acts committed against her when she was a child in order to arouse the libertines. The libertines will then discuss how best to torture the slaves they have captured using inspiration from the story, and then carry out the aforementioned punishment, then sometimes discuss their findings.
The film is in fact so devoid of humanity that once again I struggled to connect with it. The closest thing I can think of is watching a child squashing ants. To the child they’re learning about the different ways they can inflict pain and how that makes them feel, but to an outsider watching it’s just emotionless cruelty. The victims in Salo are stripped of all humanity to the point where they are just objects. A point echoed in the film’s clear themes about political corruption, with innocent civilians often being subjected to unspeakable cruelty whilst those with all the power sit and play their games.
I couldn’t recommend Salo to very many people, in fact the only people I would recommend to watch the film are those interested in film theory and particularly when it comes to political art. It’s a film that is tough to stomach but not for the reasons I anticipated, and so if like me you go into Salo expecting it to be similar to the other kinds of films you find on ‘most disturbing films’ lists like Cannibal Holocaust and A Serbian Film then you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s also too nihilistic and hardcore for the average joe moviegoer, this really is an academic theory put to film rather than written down.
I’ll likely never watch Salo again, but if I do I’ll be better prepared. Will I enjoy it more? Probably not, but preparation is key when it comes to extreme cinema, and I’ll always be grateful to Salo for teaching me that.
The film is in fact so devoid of humanity that once again I struggled to connect with it. The closest thing I can think of is watching a child squashing ants. To the child they’re learning about the different ways they can inflict pain and how that makes them feel, but to an outsider watching it’s just emotionless cruelty. The victims in Salo are stripped of all humanity to the point where they are just objects. A point echoed in the film’s clear themes about political corruption, with innocent civilians often being subjected to unspeakable cruelty whilst those with all the power sit and play their games.
I couldn’t recommend Salo to very many people, in fact the only people I would recommend to watch the film are those interested in film theory and particularly when it comes to political art. It’s a film that is tough to stomach but not for the reasons I anticipated, and so if like me you go into Salo expecting it to be similar to the other kinds of films you find on ‘most disturbing films’ lists like Cannibal Holocaust and A Serbian Film then you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s also too nihilistic and hardcore for the average joe moviegoer, this really is an academic theory put to film rather than written down.
I’ll likely never watch Salo again, but if I do I’ll be better prepared. Will I enjoy it more? Probably not, but preparation is key when it comes to extreme cinema, and I’ll always be grateful to Salo for teaching me that.