17 Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

[kaujot]

Have you seen Bertolucci's The Conformist?

[Cold Bishop]

As an attack on fascism, I think the movie is laughable (fascists are evil because they rape and torture children!

Are you insinuating they aren't/don't.

It would be fine, if it was based on a true-story, and excellent if it was a documentary about actual facist atrocities (I mean, there's plenty to choose from.) But, as it is, the whole "criticism of facism" falls apart right from the moment they based the screenplay on a 300 year old work of fiction)

This is the point were I talk about allegory, metaphor, adaptation, yadda yadda yadda.

Actually, it wasn't until I saw "Pan's Labyrinth" (and, later, Devil's Backbone) that I took fascist atrocities seriously.

Really, that's your "OMG, Fascists are teh suck" moment. I like Del Toro's films, but I fail to see how his work, and especially the step-father in Pan's Labyrinth, are any less one-dimensional than what you see in the above films.

That era not being as well known as the Nazi's Holocaust, I had always kind of assumed that Communist film-makers like Bertolluci and Pasolini were just presenting simplistically cartoon exaggerations.

Not only is making such a statement without mentioning The Conformist kind of ridiculous (and I do hope you've seen other Pasolinis), so is stating their treatment of fascism is "simplistic cartoons" (Granted, 1900 has its moments). Are watching the same filmmakers?

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.

As least you got something out of it, although there is definitely more.

[domino harvey]

Congratulations are in order for somehow triggering this ad to appear in this thread.

[Cold Bishop]

Have you not seen Maurice Sendak's Justine?

At least its not advertising "Top-Secret Los Alamos Physicists Have Opened A Gateway to Hell!" Now, why would I want support that ad.

[cdnchris]

Congratulations are in order for somehow triggering this ad to appear in this thread.

I know you guy's weren't big on them but come on, they do add the occasional chuckle here and there.

[Darth Lavender]

As an attack on fascism, I think the movie is laughable (fascists are evil because they rape and torture children!

Are you insinuating they aren't/don't.

No, but my point is, it sounds sensationalistic. The fact that fascist war-crimes really were so extreme is all the more reason for a more "credible looking" critique.

Suppose you had never heard of the holocaust (difficult thing to suppose,) and then somebody showed you a straight exploitation/horror movie about it. Wouldn't you naturally assume they were seriously exaggerating?

That's why, aside from all being well-documented (and, more importantly, well known) a film like Schindler's List or The Pianist relies so heavily things like black and white cinematography, 'documentary style' camera work, etc. Because, despite being real, the holocaust (and the fascist war-crimes) are so far beyond what SEEMS plausible, that the natural reaction is to just dismiss it as inaccuracy and exaggeration (in fact, you'll find that's precisely what a lot of people thought the Holocaust was, until the camps were actually discovered.)

My point about "fascists rape and kill children" is that it SOUNDS so much like the type of thing one just shouts out on a messageboard or at a rally; so to be taken seriously, it requires something extra (a better knowledge of that period in history, which I lacked... Or, even just a "based on a true story" (which Salo, obviously, couldn't offer))

Really, that's your "OMG, Fascists are teh suck" moment. I like Del Toro's films, but I fail to see how his work, and especially the step-father in Pan's Labyrinth, are any less one-dimensional than what you see in the above films.

The thing about Pasolini and Bertolucci is that they were both communists (ie. the exact opposite, politically, of fascists) And, generally speaking, people tend to say very nasty things about those who hold opposite views (especially in politics)

By the time del Toro made his film, fascism was long dead and del Toro himself has never been a vocally political fellow. So, I naturally figured if even del Toro is automatically presenting fascists as evil, then it suggests they really were as 'unbelievably extreme' as Pasolini and Bertolucci suggest.

Not only is making such a statement without mentioning The Conformist kind of ridiculous (and I do hope you've seen other Pasolinis), so is stating their treatment of fascism is "simplistic cartoons" (Granted, 1900 has its moments). Are watching the same filmmakers?

Actually; embarrassing confession; I still haven't watched the Conformist...

It's on my shelf, amidst a sizable 'unwatched' pile (probably in the area of 100 DVDs) and I just keep forgetting about it.

And my knowledge of Pasolini and Bertolucci is actually quite limited (seen a few other films of theirs, but not many) Also worth mentioning, 1900 was, I think, the first film I'd seen about that whole period... Not exactly the kind of unbalanced presentation one would get from, say, reading an encyclopaedia entry on the subject (which is what I certainly SHOULD have done, many years ago. But, I think we all have a few gaping holes in our knowledge of history, politics, etc.)

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.

As least you got something out of it, although there is definitely more.

Indeed. I think it's one of the best examples of "thought provoking" cinema. Were the analysis of the film is almost more interesting than the film itself (witness the 7 pages already on this thread, and even the film's own need to use a bibliography)

I would, actually, be somewhat interested in how it serves as a 'critique' of fascism. The only thing that comes immediately to mind (beyond the graphic fascist-inflicted violence; which I still wouldn't consider a 'critique') is perhaps in the general theme of power and its various ill effects (degrading morals, ultimate lack of purpose beyond its own exercise, etc.)

I would still entertain the idea, though, that Salo uses the fascists purely as a proxy for other more abstract things.

[oldsheperd]

I would love to see someone redo this with surrogates standing in as the Bush Administration.

[jbeall]

I would love to see someone redo this with surrogates standing in as the Bush Administration.

Too heavy-handed, IMHO. But if you cast Armond White...

[Buttery Jeb]

Besides, the Bush Administration is being used elsewhere.

-BJ

[atcolomb]

I would love to see someone redo this with surrogates standing in as the Bush Administration.

If Pasolini were alive today he would name the sequel....Salo 2 The Burning Bush.... #-o

[Darth Lavender]

Come to think of it, did Pasolini ever happen to mention what he was going to use as the basis for the next two entries in his "Trilogy of Death"?

[Jeff]

Re-issue announced.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I'm excited that Gorin is on here. I'm looking forward to all the extras, but I'll go to him first. It's great that it's getting the treatment it warrants.
I am a little worried to get the film, though. I love Night and Fog and I easily made it through WR so I'd like to go Salo. It's been unavailable for years so I'd like to see what the fuss is about. Then again, so was Lost Girls by Alan Moore. On that note, I'd like to know if this for Pasolini completists only or not. Will it just be another Lost Girls if you know what I mean. I'm on the fence about this. I've read a lot about the film (including the BFI monograph) and I'm intrigued. It's not the violence in the film that worries me; it's the time and money I'll be spending. I've read the forum's comments here, but I'm still undecided. Any thoughts?

[domino harvey]

If you love watching teenagers eating feces, fucking, and then getting tortured/murdered in a manner completely absent of merit, aesthetic or otherwise, than this is your must-buy release of the year. Otherwise, pursue at your own peril. It's a one-note exercise in shock, the same kind of shock the book has already prevented the film from succeeding at. It does have its defenders, so I suppose you can build a beautiful castle of ideas upon this garbage dump of a film, but I can't help but wonder why anyone would exert so much effort when there's plenty of grassy cinematic fields out there. Pasolini was capable of making challenging films that are worth sitting through, but this isn't one of them.

[Tribe]

If you love watching teenagers eating feces, fucking, and then getting tortured/murdered in a manner completely absent of merit, aesthetic or otherwise, than this is your must-buy release of the year.

It sounds like one of those Co-eds Gone Wild DVDs! I'm there!

[domino harvey]

Joe Francis is our generation's Pasolini, but only in that I would like to see him strangled by a prostitute

[Tom Hagen]

If you love watching teenagers eating feces, fucking, and then getting tortured/murdered in a manner completely absent of merit, aesthetic or otherwise, than this is your must-buy release of the year.

It sounds like one of those Co-eds Gone Wild DVDs! I'm there!

It sounds like a description of some forthcoming Michael Haneke project to me.

[Gregory]

Haneke has named this as one of his favorite films so the connection isn't totally off-base (ignoring the tedious "completely absent of merit" pronouncement), although I suspect there might be a tendency to associate Salò and Haneke's body of work on fairly superficial grounds, from the dismissive comments I've read of both on this forum.

I think it's great news that this will be back in the collection. I hope many will "exert the effort" not only to watch this film but to look charitably at why Pasolini made the film the way he did. Films that are merely shocking and grotesque are a dime-a-dozen, and they often become dated pretty quickly. The fact that this one is still so controversial is a sign of its lasting power. And beneath that controversy, I think the film has important things to say to us.

[Mr Sausage]

It does, and it's message of mankind's untramelled ability for evil while bleak is horribly real.

Admittedly I haven't seen Salo, and I don't want to be dismissive, but the first thing that came to mind when I read the above was: did people really need to be convinced of this? The second was: is such a graphic and extended depiction of debasement and suffering any more effective at communicating this message than, say, Night and Fog (which is neither graphic nor extended)?

[Darth Lavender]

Indeed.

As something to prompt analysis of evil, the film is excellent.

But, as a simple "presentation" of evil, it fails. Not only is it excessive but the fictional framework and the simple fact that it is a movie, means that it can't even come close to a number of documentaries for confrontational "this is what happens in the world we live in" value.
Actually, you don't even need documentaries. I'm sure there's plenty of half-page-and-no-illustration newspaper reports that would exceed Salo's effectiveness in confronting viewers with the basic, undeniable reality of evil.

[Tom Hagen]

It does, and it's message of mankind's untramelled ability for evil while bleak is horribly real.

Admittedly I haven't seen Salo, and I don't want to be dismissive, but the first thing that came to mind when I read the above was: did people really need to be convinced of this?

I haven't seen the film either, but those sentiments seem spot on to me. Moreover, I simply fail to see how the audience is necessarily complicit in the atrocities depicted in a film like this or Funny Games. I understand the argument that my participation in mass culture, consumption, etc. implicates me as a part of a system that causes immense suffering. But it is a huge lapse in logic (not to mention the similar lapse in moral evaluation) to make your audience a tacit participant in the unimaginable.

The references to Night and Fog also reminded me of something that I once read in a book by the philosopher Robert Nozick regarding the Holocaust. He wrote that for whatever mankind's sins were prior to the second world war, in the aftermath of that horror, we are utterly irredeemable as a species, and that the effect of any divine redemption has been wholly negated. (Ed. note: Woody Allen expresses a similar sentiment in that horrible film he did with Jason Biggs). What has always bothered me about the premise of Salo is that it seems to elide the inescapable fact that there is literally no phantasmagoria that Sade or Pasolini could dream up which is more morally repugnant than the things that actually occurred in Auschwitz, in Stalin's gulags, or in the jungles of Vietnam.

[a.khan]

Haneke has named this as one of his favorite films ...

And, for context, here are the other nine from his Top 10:

Au hasard Balthazar (1966), Lancelot du Lac (1974), Mirror (1975), The Exterminating Angel (1962), The Gold Rush (1925), Psycho (1960), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Germany Year Zero (1948) and L'Eclisse (1962).

[Darth Lavender]

The references to Night and Fog also reminded me of something that I once read in a book by the philosopher Robert Nozick regarding the Holocaust. He wrote that for whatever mankind's sins were prior to the second world war, in the aftermath of that horror, we are utterly irredeemable as a species, and that the effect of any divine redemption has been wholly negated. (Ed. note: Woody Allen expresses a similar sentiment in that horrible film he did with Jason Biggs)

That sentiment seems, frankly, ridiculous. The Holocaust was certainly one of the most 'iconic' examples of evil in the history of mankind, but it was certainly nothing new. I can believe that nothing in all man's 3,000,000 years (or whatever it is) has exceeded the Holocaust. But, I find it frankly silly to suggest that with all the massacres, tortures, injustices and horrors that have occured over those 3,000,000 years nothing had at least equalled the Holocaust.

Quotes like that just drive home the point that any view can be elevated to the point of ridiculousness. One would think that criticising the Holocaust, at least, should be darn near impossible to f___ up. But this Nozick fellow seems to have done precisely that.
I'm reminded of another quote I read, suggesting that to even acknowledge the existance of Hitler's baby photos was something utterly evil and wrong

[Jun-Dai]

But, I find it frankly silly to suggest that with all the massacres, tortures, injustices and horrors that have occured over those 3,000,000 years nothing had at least equalled the Holocaust.

What puts the Holocaust in the absolute position it has attained is a combination of the severity, systematicness, singularity (by which I mean the short time over which it occurred, giving it an identity as a single, giant atrocity, instead of a pattern of atrocities over a hundred years), and scale. I don't think anything else quite touches it in the history of atrocities when you consider all four of these things, though it would be hard to believe that there haven't been atrocities that have exceeded it in each of these categories individually.

I think part of what makes Salò such a strong film is that it provides an identity to the characters. It's not that we are necessarily meant to identify with them in any sense, but that we see people that have adjusted to committing atrocities in the most casual of senses, and that their level of comfort with what they are doing is such that they behave as though it were normal. In a sense, Pasolini is asking us to set moral judgements aside temporarily to imagine what it is like to be amidst these atrocities as though they were normal, and then he pushes and pushes the limits until you can no longer even do that.

This is in complete contrast with something like Pan's Labyrinth where fascism is never meant to be something comprehensible. Sure, we are expected on some level to understand why someone might go along to get along in a fascist society, but the captain is the closest we get to seeing the motivations of a fascist, and he is only slightly less of a caricature than Darth Vader. Pan's Labyrinth is many things, and it is a wonderful film, but it is not a complex look into fascism.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning that there is much more to fascism than the Holocaust and other atrocities, just as there is much more to the Holocaust than fascism. Without taking both of these into account, we'll never see clearly enough the next holocaust coming. Salò happens to be an examination of the intersection of fascism and atrocities while Pan's Labyrinth happens to be an examination of neither (it's more an examination what it's like to be a child in a time of repression with a very dangerous step-father). Life is Beautiful is probably a better comparison as an examination of living with fascism and atrocity.

[T99]

Here are some thoughts in defence of the film:

1. It's been ten years since the first time I saw Salo. I can still remember very clearly the impact the film had on me and my friends. After walking out of the cinema we were all literally quiet for the following ten minutes. None of us could express the emotions and thoughts that the film just had raised in us. Finally coming to a pub we sat down and used the following four hours or so just discussing Pasolini's film (something that has never happened before or since, mainly because my friends are no cinephiles). Some of the topics we discussed were: What was the film really about; is it acceptable to make a film like this; what is a director's responsibility when working with young amateur actors; how true is the film to the attrocities of real life etc. So, when people are critizing the film I always come to think of this evening. A film that raises all these questions and emotions can't be a failure. On the contrary, it is clearly a sign of a true masteripiece.

2. Pasolini is a director that shouldn't be judged by one film, but by his whole filmography. I always recommend that people see at least The Gospel According to St. Matthew before they watch Salo, just so they can understand that Pasolini isn't a prentetious provocateur, but an artist with a sensible side too and with a great understanding for humanity. The bleakness of Salo actually tells more about the state Pasolini was in during the time of writing and preparing the film. I remember reading somewhere that Pasolini's next project would have been more lighter and positive and that the shooting of Salo was the happiest time of his life.

3. Structurally and stylistically Salo is Pasolini's best film. Tonino Delli Colli's photography and Dante Ferreti's scenography is just magnificient. The actors are too good to be true. The story hits you in the face with the power of a sledge hammer. Once you've seen the film, you will never forget it. In other words, see the film.