17 Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

[CSM126]

Having finally seen Salo, I've gotta say...I'm kinda perplexed. For one, it's nowhere near as outright shocking as it's made out to be. I suppose this could be a function of my having read up on it so much that I was just prepared for it all, but nonetheless, I was never once "disturbed". Nauseated? Somewhat, during the shit eating (but again, not as much as you'd think). I think a better word to describe my feelings on the film is "repelled". I'm not prudish or easily offended, but I was definitely repulsed by the casual vulgarity of the whores while telling their stories, and the public sex - especially the consensual stuff, oddly, like the President laughing "Do me, Enzio! Do me!" - just made me wanna gag (that's not the best word for it, but that's the best I can think of at the moment). I've never had anything against sex or porn, but after seeing people reveling in such disgusting forms of it, I feel like I don't particularly care for it right now, either. I think I'd rather not even think about people having sex. And as for the whores...well, I've never found women being salty (to put it mildly) to be very attractive (quite the opposite, really), but this hit a new level of turn off for me. I felt my skin crawl as they threw around those words. It's just so...base. You know what I mean?

The key, I think, is that my reaction to Salo wasn't what I feel watching something like Silence of the Lambs, where I mostly want to cry or United 93, where I barely held back from screaming, for example. In other words, Salo wasn't a physical reaction, it was all mental. I sat there and thought "That's nasty" or "That's wrong", but I was calm the whole time. And that's why I say it's not disturbing. This is pretty much intellectualism, not the shocking/gross film it's made out to be.

Secondly, I don't necessarily see Salo as a critique of "social, sexual, and political dynamics" like the box says. I know most people talk about the film in those terms, and I could see the all-too obvious Fascism/power denouncement for sure, but on a stronger level, Salo came across to me as an attack on art and the notion of beauty in art. Pasolini constructs every scene so as to make it look like a beautiful painting - in fact, if you turned off the subtitles (and assuming you don't know Italian), I'd imagine Salo would seem like a lovely art film with only occasional moments of grotesquery. Especially so in the first hour, where there's really no torture other than the psychological kind inflicted by the whores' story-telling (which, again, is lost without the subtitles). But as the film progresses into that second hour, Pasolini starts adding the shit and the blood and the torture, almost as if he's taking a beautiful painting and peeling off some of the paint to reveal nasty parts that had been covered up. On the one hand, I suppose you could construe this as social critique along the lines of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, revealing the rot underneath a society that looks happy and complacent on the surface, but on the other hand, while in the midst of watching the film all I felt was that this is Pasolini's way of taking away the things we think beautiful and maybe even asking us to see beauty in what we currently revile. Almost like maybe we have our notions of beauty and ugliness flip-flopped and he wants to set it straight. Or maybe there just is no true beauty, just some things we like a little better than others and latch onto as a futile hope of finding beauty.

Not a pleasant film, but an intellectually stimulating one. I don't feel like I like it or hate it. I don't even know if I could view it on those terms; it might just not be that kind of movie for me.

[Tommaso]

I've never had anything against sex or porn, but after seeing people reveling in such disgusting forms of it, I feel like I don't particularly care for it right now, either. I think I'd rather not even think about people having sex.

Perhaps that was exactly the reaction Pasolini was aiming for? After setting up his sexual utopia in the "Trilogia" and finally discarding it as an illusion, it seems to me that Pasolini discarded the idea of sex as enjoyment and, more important, as a means of furthering social progress completely. One must remember that this was still the time of the re-discovery of Wilhelm Reich and the 'sexual revolution'; compare the two Makavejev films, for instance. It's not by chance perhaps that the project Pasolini had in mind at the time he was murdered was a film on 'Saint' Paul, the person who changed the original idea of Christianity into the complete anti-sexual reverse we now commonly associate with it. But I haven't read the script of that proposed film on Paul yet (it has been published recently in German, perhaps it's also out in English, dunno), so I don't know the stance he takes there.

Salo came across to me as an attack on art and the notion of beauty in art.

Yes, possibly true. Though I can't really agree with your other point that he tries to make us see the ugly as something having inherent beauty. It's rather that he doesn't seem to believe in the power of art as something inherently beautiful anymore, in a similar way as his disillusion with sexuality. What remains are 'empty' forms; thus the frighteningly precise geometric set-ups and formal care in the compositions.

[Tom Hagen]

The "missing" Salo scene remains an enigma.

[domino harvey]

Why the hell wouldn't they include it as an extra scene then?

[Antoine Doinel]

Where this scene came from—how it appears in a UK print but not in original elements in Italy—remains a mystery I just cannot solve.

It's really too bad they have to slag the BFI in a backhanded manner about this. I'm sure Criterion can easily place a call to them and ask them about the scene, and how they managed to uncover it etc.

[justeleblanc]

If they don't have the rights to the print with the missing scene, can they legally sell it? As opposed to posting on their site for free.

[Tom Hagen]

It's really too bad they have to slag the BFI in a backhanded manner about this. I'm sure Criterion can easily place a call to them and ask them about the scene, and how they managed to uncover it etc.

From what I read on the Salo thread, I believe MichaelB was going to follow up on it, and he mentioned that James White -- BFI's person who Kim Hendrickson spoke with per the blog post -- wasn't with BFI when they did their previous release. I cross-posted the blog update here for the benefit of those who (like me) may not be following the Salo discussion religiously, but who are still anal retentive enough (like me) to be interested in this particular story.

[sir karl]

Fyi- the missing scene is also on the German Legend DVD.

[MichaelB]

New blog post which explains the missing scene (kind of).

And suggests that the scene might not be in the new BFI transfer after all (though surely they'd include it as a 'deleted scene'?)

I haven't seen the disc yet, but this extract from the booklet should conclude matters:

In order to present Salò in its complete and uncut form, this DVD edition includes a brief scene which was cut from the original negative and is only available in a 35mm print held at the BFI National Archive. Although efforts have been made to make this inserted material consistent with the overall feature, the noticeable contrast in image quality is due to the difference in source material.

[mfunk9786]

What an awful film. Pasolini just strikes me as such a bore, he really comes off as a self-important ass in the interviews on the second disc, and totally reveals for me where this film came from. He takes a tiny theme that you can teach a child in 10 minutes (Fascism is bad) and makes it into a droll bore of a film that, if you know what to expect from it, makes for an even more unpleasant viewing experience.

What was he trying to teach us that we, as educated people who even have the occasion to seek out and see Salo, don't already know? And if this was just his attempt to thrust his disillusionment with the beauty of sex onto us, then he's fucking delusional. Sex is beautiful, and just because Pasolini was too self-important to acknowledge it, it doesn't mean it's a theme that would or does resonate with the viewer.

But he's managed to create a film that is criticism-proof. Because if someone comes out as detesting it (and really, Salo is a film that the word detest was created for), they are simply labeled as too prudish to be able to handle it. So everyone who sees it either takes the holier-than-thou "it's wonderful art that you just don't understand" point of view, or the "despite its flaws, it's still wonderful art" point of view that's even more cowardly. Because no one wants to be accused of missing the point of a film like this.

[MichaelB]

Because if someone comes out as detesting it (and really, Salo is a film that the word detest was created for), they are simply labeled as too prudish to be able to handle it.

By whom?

Plenty of perfectly intelligent and culturally alert individuals have expressed their detestation of Salo over the years, and I'm not aware of any serious attempts at labelling them prudes who "can't handle it". Or at least not in such a way that their argument doesn't shrivel in seconds.

[myrnaloyisdope]

Salo came across to me as an attack on art and the notion of beauty in art. Pasolini constructs every scene so as to make it look like a beautiful painting - in fact, if you turned off the subtitles (and assuming you don't know Italian), I'd imagine Salo would seem like a lovely art film with only occasional moments of grotesquery. Especially so in the first hour, where there's really no torture other than the psychological kind inflicted by the whores' story-telling (which, again, is lost without the subtitles). But as the film progresses into that second hour, Pasolini starts adding the shit and the blood and the torture, almost as if he's taking a beautiful painting and peeling off some of the paint to reveal nasty parts that had been covered up.

I really think that's a fitting interpretation.

As far as it being a critique of fascism, I didn't think it was simply that but rather a critique on power in general, and the use of power to exploit and degrade. I interpreted the use of sexual degradation, torture, and violence as substituting for the typical anti-war meme of corrupt government sending young, innocent men to die. Rather than show the horrors and degradation of war, Salo depicts that degradation instead through sex and torture. I envision the graphic nature of Salo as being primarily a stylistic choice, designed to tell a familiar story about power and corruption.

[domino harvey]

Great writeup Mfunk =D>

[mfunk9786]

I envision the graphic nature of Salo as being primarily a stylistic choice, designed to tell a familiar story about power and corruption.

So why not just imply the violence and degradation that occurs in the film, rather than subject a group of underage actors and actresses to the leering eyes and hands of their adult co-stars?

Oh, because you're Pasolini, and you think that without bluntly showing these horrors to the viewer non-stop for two hours, they're too stupid to understand the full impact of the point you're trying to make. Because you're so superior to your viewer. It's all a bunch of self-important bullshit.

I kept thinking of this quote from Roger Ebert from his Blue Velvet review as I watched this film (although I never agreed with it in the context of Blue Velvet):

The sexual material in "Blue Velvet" is so disturbing, and the performance by Rosellini is so convincing and courageous, that it demands a movie that deserves it.

This definitely applies to the young actors in Salo (and, I presume and hope, the older ones - it couldn't have been a picnic for them, either). Pasolini went ahead and cast, in some cases 16 and 17 year olds, in a film that he explained would require "some nudity" on their parts. Then subjected them to constant day-long fully nude shoots, in front of cast and crew - old men grabbing at their bodies, leading them around on leashes, forcing them to touch their genitals, etc, etc... this is about as close to a criminal offense as a mainstream film gets. And for what? Really, for what? What does anyone get out of this film that they wouldn't have already internalized before viewing it?

[Narshty]

Where do you get all this information about duplicitious casting from? The accounts I've heard say the atmosphere on-set was surprisingly jovial.

[mfunk9786]

So was the atmosphere at the last NAMBLA convention

[Narshty]

So you disliked the film and decide to make up your own account of how the film was made to further fuel your own distaste? Horses for courses, I suppose.

[mfunk9786]

"Salo" is, I think, a perfect example of the kind of material that, theoretically, anyway, can be acceptable on paper but becomes so repugnant when visualized on the screen that it further dehumanizes the human spirit, which is supposed to be the artist's concern. When one reads, one exercises all kinds of intellectual processes that are absent when one looks at pictures. An image frequently says less than a thousand words. It's of especially limited use when dealing with the kind of ideas that Mr. Pasolini was playing with here.

[dr gennesier]

So was the atmosphere at the last NAMBLA convention

Oh, were you there?

Seriously though, I would say that Passolini very much needed to convey these ideas in such a way. Given the state of the world today, I would say that most are too stupid to understand the point he was making. It's all well & good to say "Fascism is bad mmmmkay" but that doesn't even begin to address the nature of the issue. Salo does

[mfunk9786]

Yeah, I always thought domestic violence was just peachy until I saw Enough.

[dr gennesier]

I don't quite understand the link between domestic violence and fascism. Nor have I seen the movie you reference, but I am glad it has made you a better person

[mfunk9786]

I don't quite understand the link between domestic violence and fascism. Nor have I seen the movie you reference, but I am glad it has made you a better person

...speechless.

[LQ]

Yeah, I always thought domestic violence was just peachy until I saw Enough.

Hee hee!

I'm with mfunk on this one; there are many other Italian movies that make the same statement, "fascism is bad", and much more effectively than Salo.

[Michael]

My respect for Salo is tremendous, to think of a film like this to be made 30 years ago is incredibly inspiring. I have not seen Salo in years. However its strange to say that all the torture in the film faded completely from my mind and all I remember of the film is the women spewing out the dizzy pornographic fairy tales and of course, the pianist jumping off the balcony - ironic how that pianist's death hurt me more more than all the torture, killing, suffering in the film. Pasolini is not my favorite director, I do like Mamma Roma mainly for the sublime soul of Anna Magnani, who manages to save every film she is in, including the lighting fast appearance in Fellini Roma.

[mfunk9786]

My respect for Salo is tremendous, to think of a film like this to be made 30 years ago is incredibly inspiring.

Why?