17 Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

[arsonfilms]

I was expecting the reissue of this much sooner. Since when has a release taken more than 6 months to appear after an official announcement?

I don't think that the mention of actively working on a new HD master constituted an "official announcement." Case in point, When Under the Volcano and Robinson Crusoe on Mars were mentioned, It was firmly established that the rights had just been negotiated, and when you factor in the also officially established information that any given Criterion title takes two or three years to complete, six months hardly seems like anything. Besides, Seven Samurai was something like 9 months after the mention in the newsletter, and Yojimbo and Sanjuro took over a year to come out.

[macjunky]

I have a question for anybody that can help me out. I saw this on the IMDb Salò message boards:

Re: Criterion re-release in 2007 (Salò)

I hope that it will contain the newly found footage (around 55 minutes?)

Then somewhere else I ran into these links:

Pasolini, Salo, and Abu Ghraib
L'ultimo film di Pasolini negli scatti di Cevallos
Quattro mostre romane per Pasolini
Film on Pasolini to debut at Venice film festival

About photographs that Fabian Cevallos had taken on the set of Salò during shooting, but as far as I could tell not actual footage of lost 35mm film. Does anybody here know about newly found video of Salò, like lost scenes or some longer uncut print other than the BFI dvd?

Also, does anybody know about the Fabian Cevallos Salò pictures, is there any word of a book of them ever coming out?

[HerrSchreck]

AGAIN with this post? Am I having deja vu every Sunday now or something?

How does this macjunky guy have only one post to his name? This thing has gone up at least 3-4 times at least!

[cdnchris]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say nobody may know about this footage.

[kinjitsu]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say nobody may know about this footage.

That's probably because, as DH points out, the so-called missing footage probably doesn't exist, also, before anyone goes on a wild goose chase, none of the links in macjunky's post have anything whatsoever to do with the so-called missing footage.

Anyhow, according to Pasolini's long-time friend and collaborator, Sergio Citti, several reels of footage were stolen from a lab in Rome during the final stages of shooting and presumably held for ransom in order to lure Pasolini into an ambush.

From the Wikipedia Pasolini page (and source of macjunky's links):

Evidence uncovered in 2005 points to Pasolini being murdered by an extortionist. Testimony by Pasolini's friend Sergio Citti indicates that some of the film rolls from Salò were stolen and Pasolini was going to meet with the thieves after a visit to Stockholm, November 2, 1975.

However:

Pasolini's cousin and literary executor Nico Naldini maintained that the case of the stolen reels had been solved long before that tragic night.

From the Wikipedia Salò page:

Several versions of the film exist. The film originally ran approximately 145 minutes, but Pasolini himself removed 25 minutes to help the pacing. The longest available version is the widely sold DVD from the BFI, which features a short scene usually missing from other prints -- during the first wedding ceremony, one of the masters quotes a poem by Gottfried Benn.

Salò was restored in 2005 by the Cineteca Nazionale, which, if I'm not mistaken, has a run time of 119 minutes.

Unfortunately, most of the Italian news links concerning the re-opening of the investigation into Pasolini's death that refer to the stolen reels have either expired or are now archived making it difficult to piece together a cohesive story. In any event, Sergio Citti died in October 2005, the same day the murder investigation was re-shelved, possibly for good.

Oddly enough, today is the 85th anniversary of Pasolini's birth.

[Soothsayer]

I also seem to remember another scene of one of the "elite" being fucked by one of the young men who appears to withdraw what looks like a semi-erect penis (possibly prosthetic like the torture scenes?) who then says something like "I am always willing to service you master..." But again I cant find this shot or dialogue in the Criterion LD.

I'm pretty sure this scene is on the Criterion DVD. Near the end, with the Bishop.

[malcolm1980]

I read somewhere that Criterion has cleared the rights and a re-issue is in the works. Any updates on this?

[kinjitsu]

Salò: Have we been able to renew our rights? Well, here's the answer you weren't expecting. Yes. We're working on a brand new HD transfer now. It'll be a totally new release and be out in 2007.

I guess he meant 2008.

[arsonfilms]

Salò: Have we been able to renew our rights? Well, here's the answer you weren't expecting. Yes. We're working on a brand new HD transfer now. It'll be a totally new release and be out in 2007.

I guess he meant 2008.

Hopefully very early 2008. I sold my bootleg copy shortly after this announcement was made, and I've been anxious to see it again since. I REALLY wouldn't mind if it came as a part of a boxset, but I'll take whatever I can get. Might make a good paired release with Pigsty?

[Magic Hate Ball]

I'm kind of looking forward to seeing this, you know, in that "forbidden treasure" sort of way.

[Cold Bishop]

I'm kind of looking forward to seeing this, you know, in that "forbidden treasure" sort of way.

Why? It's a great, if uncompromising, film.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I rather like Criterion Contraption's review of Salò. I like all Criterion Contraption reviews, but this one has a couple cute gems:

Critics often describe movies as visceral. If they haven't seen Salò, I respectfully submit that they don't know what the fuck they're talking about. ...

Pasolini put together this film at a low point in his life (and shortly before he was strangled to death by a male prostitute) ...

his stated intention was to produce an "indigestible" movie. Mission accomplished.

[domino harvey]

"120 Days" is, I believe, de Sade's longest novel, and is at least several hundred pages. It's very repetitious. I would be surprised if many people could actually get through it, but it is fun to skim (it has little narrative drive so it's very skimmable). Also, although I read it 15 years ago or so, I'm not sure reading it would add much to an understanding of Salo. It might be better to read the books in Salo's bibliography.

I actually read it all in one sitting a couple years ago, it's a little over three hundred pages. The last twenty pages took me an hour to read just because I was exhausted. The book's truly an endurance test and at a certain point finishing the book becomes a personal challenge to oneself. The only good thing about reading the whole thing is that it takes something truly abominable to shock you afterwards-- No description of the text can do justice to how truly horrible the events of the book are. Even trying to keep an ironic detachment to the text and recognizing that a good deal of the sexual violence is so exaggerated that it's satirical can only last so long before you just get inundated by the listing of offenses.

[Darth Lavender]

I read bits of the book a while ago. I can understand it being an 'endurance test' in the sense of long and repetitive (although I think 'repetitive' is part of the point) But I found a lot of the violence too silly and exagerated to provoke anything more than laughter (perhaps if the later parts had been more descriptive, instead of just lists, it might disturb)

My favourite example of why it's hard to be genuinely disturbed by De Sade... "He f___s a cow, it conceives and gives birth to a monster which, shortly thereafter, he f___s"

Like I've said in the past, by the end of the book, De Sade is trying so hard to be 'shocking' but he ends up sounding like Wile E. Coyote. In all seriousness, he talks about tying a little girl to a rocket later on (doubtless with 'ACME' printed on the side)

[domino harvey]

I agree and for pick-up put-down reading it likely maintains the satirical tone (my "favorite" offense comes early, with the church official who gets off on sucking the snot from the noses of little girls), it's only when you read 300 straight pages that it starts to get to you. I know for a fact I've blocked out the worst offenses but I remember enough to not want to remember more.

Strangely enough, I ended up reading another de Sade book earlier in the year, Philosophy in the Boudoir, and while certainly less weighty than 120 Days of Sodom, (I'm censoring this for the squeemish) the

Spoiler

14 year old daughter cheering as her mother's anus is raped with a syphilitic penis and then sewn shut

promises there's something to please all audiences. I don't think I'm going to try for a third.

[Matt]

In case anyone wants to dip into The 120 Days of Sodom, it's available online.

[tavernier]

In case anyone wants to dip into The 120 Days of Sodom, it's available online.

Er....thanks?

[colinr0380]

I read bits of the book a while ago. I can understand it being an 'endurance test' in the sense of long and repetitive (although I think 'repetitive' is part of the point) But I found a lot of the violence too silly and exagerated to provoke anything more than laughter (perhaps if the later parts had been more descriptive, instead of just lists, it might disturb)

My favourite example of why it's hard to be genuinely disturbed by De Sade... "He f___s a cow, it conceives and gives birth to a monster which, shortly thereafter, he f___s"

Like I've said in the past, by the end of the book, De Sade is trying so hard to be 'shocking' but he ends up sounding like Wile E. Coyote. In all seriousness, he talks about tying a little girl to a rocket later on (doubtless with 'ACME' printed on the side)

This reminds me of a nice little Channel 4 late night review show from 1999 called Sweet Talk which was a discussion show about erotic fiction and films. It reviewed a lot of different things from Romance and anime to Bruce La Bruce films, and each week they chose a book to discuss. Of course one week they chose the De Sade book! I still remember the sex kitten model they got to read the extracts each week doing the reading - it was such a strange television moment (especially as they had her sitting on a bed in a pink babydoll neglige and a pair of black framed 'intellectual' glasses to do the readings each week!)

(EDIT: Actually that reminds me of a sequence from the wonderful film La Lectrice, in which Miou-Miou reads a novel to her boyfriend in bed in which she is a professional reader. The story ends with (beware of major spoilers) a nice sequence in which she visits an old judge who asks her to read The 120 Days of Sodom to him. She takes this as a test of her ability as a reader, to not be shocked and be prepared to read whatever material she is presented with, and manages to do so. Feeling proud of her achievements and prepared to do the same again when she next visits the judge she is shocked when on her next visit she finds he has brought two of his friends to hear her read - the local lecherous doctor and the the head of police who she has had run ins with in the various other plot strands. That is when she decides to leave (with a flourish!) and the novel being read within the film comes to a perfect end!)

The guests hit on exactly the point you make, that the book is a list of every conceivable kind of act performed on every type of person or animal, using every orifice (with an emphasis on the blasphemous!)- it is shocking at first but eventually it becomes so over the top as to move into absurdity rather than staying shocking. The guests also said that around half way through even De Sade seemed to run out of ideas for new acts and spent the rest of the book outlining scenarios for possible novels. I haven't yet plucked up the courage to read the book myself yet, so is this the case?

I get the impression that the books main purpose is as a provocation and spur to the imagination of those who would never read it and have no intention of doing so. It can play on those people's minds about what kinds of perversions are enclosed within and therefore they end up imagining things much worse than are actually set down. Fear and disgust usually comes with unknown or little known things, because once someone actually takes a closer look at something horrible, they may still be shocked but they are at least then able to deal with it. There could be a debate had about whether that is because exposure to these acts desensitises people to them, or whether it allows them to better cope with the material by tackling it head on (I'm reminded of that story Stephen Prince tells on a couple of commentaries about Kurosawa's elder brother taking him out to see the horrors of the devastation following the 1923 earthquake for himself because if he didn't he would be forever terrified by his imagination of what it looked like).

I also remember when I was taking a librarianship course at University having to take a censorship module and being told by the lecturer, with no room for debate, that this was the most horrific book ever written and was a perfect example for her of why libraries should not stock a wide range of literature and why some things should be kept out of the hands of the general public. Because of that I am all the happier that Matt has linked to a full text of the novel!

I also remember when the film Salo was being released by the BFI in 2000 that there was a minor upset in the Daily Mail. Nothing on the scale of Crash's front page headlines, but I have the clipping saved in which an MP, Ann Widdecombe, talked about how terrible and disgusting the film was without ever having seen it!

Perhaps the most unintentionally funny part of the whole piece was the picture which showed the three men of the film pointing guns at the camera with an inset which showed Ann Widdecombe scowling! Needless to say I was much more frightened by Ann!

But it does suggest that the unavailability of the book and the film adds to its power immeasurably - there's that whisper about whether you've seen that disgusting film and the horrible things people do in it, or whether you've actually managed to get through the book etc.

I'm bracing for when this is finally reissued - as I'm almost certain there will be a lot of comments along the lines of "the acting was terrible", "the faeces looked like chocolate","the torture scenes were obviously faked with prosthetics" etc! Hopefully that kind of response can be interpreted as people finally checking the film out for themselves and realising that what their imagination conjured up over the years of wondering about the film while it was unavailable is much worse than anything that could ever be set down on film or written in a book.

[domino harvey]

The guests hit on exactly the point you make, that the book is a list of every conceivable kind of act performed on every type of personal or animal, using every orifice (with an emphasis on the blasphemous!)- it is shocking at first but eventually it becomes so over the top as to move into absurdity rather than staying shocking. The guests also said that around half way through even De Sade seemed to run out of ideas for new acts and spent the rest of the book outlining scenarios for possible novels. I haven't yet plucked up the courage to read the book myself yet, so is this the case?

the book was written while de Sade was imprisoned. The last section of the novel is in fact just a list of notes for de Sade to expound upon later, thus the "listing" nature of the final pages. The work was considered lost however and wasn't found until after de Sade's death, so obviously he never had the opportunity to flesh out the final passages.

[gubbelsj]

Any word anywhere on what's happening with this supposed re-release? Typical snags holding it up? Or something bigger, perhaps with the Pasolini estate?

[domino harvey]

Criterion remembered it wasn't a good movie

[Cronenfly]

While simultaneously forgetting about all the profits its mystique could bring, irregardless of quality.

[arsonfilms]

Believe it or not, I actually really like this movie, and I'm rather anxious for Criterion to reissue it. Its not the sort of thing to put on at dinner parties or anything, but to me its the most visceral attack on fascism since Night and Fog. It seems impossible to watch it without having a strong reaction, and even for that alone I feel its one of Pasolini's masterpieces.

[AfterTheRain]

Rumors are that it will be re-released in August. Hope they're true.

[Darth Lavender]

Believe it or not, I actually really like this movie, and I'm rather anxious for Criterion to reissue it. Its not the sort of thing to put on at dinner parties or anything, but to me its the most visceral attack on fascism since Night and Fog. It seems impossible to watch it without having a strong reaction, and even for that alone I feel its one of Pasolini's masterpieces.

As an attack on fascism, I think the movie is laughable (fascists are evil because they rape and torture children! It would be fine, if it was based on a true-story, and excellent if it was a documentary about actual fascist atrocities (I mean, there's plenty to choose from.) But, as it is, the whole "criticism of fascism" falls apart right from the moment they based the screenplay on a 300 year old work of fiction)

Actually, it wasn't until I saw "Pan's Labyrinth" (and, later, Devil's Backbone) that I took facist atrocities seriously. That era not being as well known as the Nazi's Holocaust, I had always kind of assumed that Communist film-makers like Bertolucci and Pasolini were just presenting simplistically cartoon exaggerations.

It wasn't until del Toro, 50 years later, presented similar levels of violence that I started to take the fascist atrocities seriously.
Of course, my ignorance on the subject can be largely attributed to my own failure to walk to the library and read a book on the subject. But political cinema is supposed to prompt exactly that. And Salo & 1900 both failed to present a credible critique of fascism (fortunately, they succeeded in other areas, especially Salo)

As a study of more abstract horror, touching upon three main concepts (the timeless ideas of Hell (ie. horror in its most basic form,) the Marquis de Sade (and similarly timeless, mental illness, the psychology of decadence) and their relationship to 'present day' reality (compared to De Sade and Dante (and the older archetypes they draw upon, even 40s Italy is relatively 'modern')) the movie does give one plenty to think about, spanning far beyond just a fictionalised version of things that don't even need to be fictionalised.