17 Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

[dr gennesier]

Salo is a deeply political movie, and it is difficult to separate it from it's politics for a discussion. It doesn't so much even say fascism is bad. The 4 pillars of society seem non the worse or it, nor do the guards created from the kidnapped youths. What it shows (to me anyhow) is the culmination of a capitalist/fascist belief system. Corporations have no morals and when you give them power over your life you are signing your death warrant. I actually see very little judgement in the film, just dispassionate observation. The idea it is a Marxist allegory of upper, middle & lower classes is interesting. It fits in nicely. I think the problems people have with the film especially today is how it puts a mirror to our own neo capitalist society and that makes people uncomfortable. It's all well and good to "believe" that fascism is bad, without realizing that fascism is not necessarily another word for dictatorship, it is really corporate control of the state. In our neo capitalist society many people today are in the position of Salo's guards and they don't like the comparison.

[Michael]

Yes, dr gennesier. Why do you think Pasolini instill Salo with loads of sex? Is it necessary? Just curious what your thinking is.

[dr gennesier]

because sex is the most personal act we can do. It is the most private. To have such control over so personal an act allows people to feel the horror of what he was showing. He wanted to show just how monstrous his subject matter was. It is also a very hot button issue for many while many have become blase to mere death and torture. I so agree this is a companion film to Franju's LA SANGUE. Very different approaches but in many ways the same film. The commodification of meat.

[MichaelB]

I disagree that it's about reducing bodies to pieces of meat - Pasolini's view of sexuality is much more complex than that.

It seems to me that he's more concerned with constructing situations in which what we perceive to be "normal" behaviour is completely inverted. So sex is invariably accompanied by violence, tenderness by humiliation, the anus, mouth and vagina have the same function, and the buttocks are considered more expressive than the face. And this ties in with the film's most notorious scene, in which food and excrement become one and the same.

[dr gennesier]

Pasolini's view of sexuality is much more complex than that.

I very much agree with that. But I never got the impression this movie was about his view of sexuality. I think the trilogy covers his views. I dont even think this movie is about sexuality. Or anyones views of it. It's about power. Not sex

[MichaelB]

But I never got the impression this movie was about his view of sexuality. I think the trilogy covers his views.

Salo was a deliberate reaction to the Trilogia della vita, and it's very much a statement of Pasolini's views about sexuality.

[dr gennesier]

Sez You

How was it a reaction to the trilogy? I know he felt that the innocence of pure sexuality had been co-opted. But I never read anywhere that his views of his own sexuality had changed, or that he felt this was right. I think the only person who could hold the sexual values seen in Salo would be a serial killer. I agree, it is very much about inversion however. The inversion of values caused by a fascist society. In that society food does equal excrement. Have you seen all the e-coli cases in the news?

[MichaelB]

Sez You

Sez a lot of people - and in any case, it's clear from the films themselves.

How was it a reaction to the trilogy?

Because the trilogy celebrated unfettered sexuality, whereas in Salo it's fettered throughout.

I know he felt that the innocence of pure sexuality had been co-opted. But I never read anywhere that his views of his own sexuality had changed, or that he felt this was right.

Salo has nothing to do with Pasolini's own sexuality - in fact, he goes out of his way not to draw a distinction between heterosexual and homosexual acts: they're all part of the same abuse of power.

[dr gennesier]

well, if it has nothing to do with his own sexuality, how could it be about his views of sexuality. What's clear from the trilogy is his love of the human body and the joy he equates with sex in all it's forms. I see it has his views on the commodification of sexuality and the abuse of power which incorporates sexual abuse. I guess I just have a problem with equating sexual abuse with sex. Sexual abuse is all about power and not so much about the sex. Sex , while it very much incorporates a power dynamic is all about the joy and not so much about the power. But then, i know little about Pasolini's private life. Personally, he could have felt Salo was the ultimate porno. I guess what i am trying to say is how can it not be about his own sexuality but yet at the same time about his views on sexuality

[mfunk9786]

because sex is the most personal act we can do. It is the most private.

Which is why, regardless of Pasolini saying otherwise, sex can never be a wholly ugly thing, something devoid of innocence. His defeatist position on sex was/is flawed.

[swo17]

sex can never be a wholly ugly thing, something devoid of innocence.

This from the guy who brought up NAMBLA earlier?

[dr gennesier]

I really dont know how many different ways to say this, but Salo is NOT about sex. It is not about Pasolini's position on sex. It is about power.

There are many people whose most personal most private acts are nothing but ugly. I'm not talking about sex either.

[swo17]

I'm not saying anything about what Pasolini intended or did not intend to say about sex in Salo. But mfunk, to say that sex can never be wholly ugly is like saying that ice cream can never be not delicious.

[Se7en082]

I ask you both to look further at one more movie, in terms of form and intention - Franju's Le Sang des Betes.

Unfortunately I do not own Eyes Without A Face.

Here you go (part one, with English voiceover). Brace yourself.

I am glad I went to sleep before I saw this post! I might get the courage to watch it later...

And to carry on the conversation, Michael B is correct in saying "Salo was a deliberate reaction to the Trilogia della vita". Pasolini wrote about this after his trilogy and even states it to the interviewer a few times in the extras on Disc 2.

[dr gennesier]

But I actually agree with him. For sex to be wholly ugly it would have to be about something other than sex.

[klee13]

The last two posts are very fine and I respect them greatly. But I ask you both to look further at one more movie, in terms of form and intention - Franju's Le Sang des Betes.

The noble tradition of Sadean discourse which cinematically I suppose begins with Bunuel in L'Age d'Or gets itself picked up again not surprisingly after the end of WW2, particualrly by artists with a poetic core of despair, like Bresson, and Franju.

Have a look and tell me what you think.

Le Sang des Bêtes is indeed a fine film. I respect Franju quite a bit for many reasons: for the Cinematheque, for the amazing Les Yeux sans Visage... It is a shame that more of his films haven't been released on DVD. I hope that the recently released Judex/Nuits Rouges find distribution in the states soon. As of now though, I would prefer not to play the regions game.

There are many images from Bêtes that remain burned into my mind: The way the white horse drops when it is hit with the bolt, the writhing then still bed of headless lambs... If I recall correctly, Gary Indiana even mentioned Bêtes in the excerpts of his book on the Salò BFI page:

Certain works yank the rug from under the meticulously planted furniture of middle-class morality and the aesthetic torpor that decorates it. John Waters's Pink Flamingos, Jean Rouch's Les Maîtres fous, Georges Franju's Le Sang des Betês, Andy Warhol's Blue Movie, anything by Hershel Gordon Lewis, scattered moments in the films of Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas - well, you can make your own list of things that lifted the top of your head off. I'm not sure that anyone is obliged to 'like' works of art that fall into this category, or that 'liking' them is ever entirely the point, though critics, quite often, mistake the celebration of the ghastly as an 'indictment of contemporary malaise', etc. - in other words, they can only like something if it can be bent to reflect their own moral certainties.

However, I think that Bêtes' juxtaposition of peaceful city scenes and the controlled madness of the slaughterhouse is quite different then Salò's complete lack of juxtaposition which in itself is one of the most disturbing and intriguing aspects of the film.

There is another thing thing that you said though that I'm not sure I agree with. I don't think a film should be watched only once if its impact is strong. To the contrary, I think that those films should be cherished and revisited because for every film that causes a reaction in the viewer, there are many that leave them feeling nothing. (I should emphasize that when I say "impact" I mean intellectual impact so that nobody makes any snide inquiries into the replayability of the Guinea Pig series.)

[mfunk9786]

I'm not saying anything about what Pasolini intended or did not intend to say about sex in Salo. But mfunk, to say that sex can never be wholly ugly is like saying that ice cream can never be not delicious.

I meant on a whole, not one particular act, but sex as an idea. Obviously a single sex act or experience can be ugly.

[Tommaso]

well, if it has nothing to do with his own sexuality, how could it be about his views of sexuality. What's clear from the trilogy is his love of the human body and the joy he equates with sex in all it's forms.I see it has his views on the commodification of sexuality and the abuse of power which incorporates sexual abuse.

At the risk of being repetitive, as a lot of this thread is already, I again have to say that the film needs to be regarded as a product of its time, not only with respect to what was going on in Italy, but to the whole idea of sexual politics/liberation in the wake of Neo-Reichian psychology et al in the late 60s/early 70s. While Pasolini certainly does not adapt any of the theories about sexual liberation then flowing around in any direct manner (he wasn't Otto Muehl, thankfully), he certainly saw sex as a tool of liberation (social, political) in the Trilogy. Or better: he thought that such a liberated form of sex as depicted in these three films would only be possible in a liberated society, and for him that meant: an archaic, pre-industrial, or at the very least, non-capitalist society. That doesn't necessarily imply a Marxist society, as Pasolini as far as I can see had already severed his ties with the political proponents of Marxism (the PCI), or rather: they severed the ties with him.

Anyway, in my view he realised that the possibility of ever achieving such a society or preserving it where it still existed for him (remember that San'aa film, made as an urgent address to the United Nations!) was impossible; instead he saw the consumerist neo-liberal capitalist society of his day (not to speak of ours) as the force that would take over the world and thus the idea of a truly liberated sexuality would become impossible.

Perhaps the only real flaw was to equate this with fascism. The question is how you define fascism: I don't think he had Mussolini, Hitler or any specific political party in mind, but rather a broader definition of fascism as social power, as a particular frame of mind. And here I cannot help but think of Wilhelm Reich again, who in all his work made the point that this particular 'fascist' frame of mind goes hand-in-hand with abusive sexuality, the desire to hurt the other person or be hurt etc. The term 'sexual abuse' in this way of thinking goes much further than what we normally associate with it. It's not just an abuse of the body (as in rape or in the sadist acts depicted in the film), but also and much more often in the sense that sex becomes ultimately a mechanical act and the opposite of a joyful activity in a very broad sense.

In this respect I would also say it's a film about power, politics and culture. But these social things - in this line of thinking - cannot be separated from the individual experience and are thus necessarily connected with sex. The film doesn't 'propose' anything about sex and quite obviously doesn't support sadism, but uses it as a metaphor of analyzing a cultural situation, a situation that necessarily also has effects on the individual person, whether he agrees with it or not. In this respect only is it a film about Pasolini's own sexuality. But probably it's much more a statement about Italian society and its thinking about sex. And I remember Pasolini writing somewhere about actual events of sadistic child abuse having occured in Italy at the time to which those in power had closed their eyes.

Sorry for these ramblings, I'm not sure whether it's entirely clear what I want to say. I just have the feeling that what we all personally think about sex and what we enjoy or not and how we react to "Salo" (repulsed, nauseated, angry) is completely irrelevant for understanding Pasolini's intentions with this film. The repulsion we feel rather comes from the frontal attack against our way of living than from the sexual abuse on-screen. And somewhere in the early pages of this thread there were fine analyses how the film places the viewer in the role of the perpetrator of the crimes.

[dr gennesier]

Tommaso I agree with everything you have o say except that the film should be regarded as a product of it's time. I find it a film more relevant to now than to the 70's. I don't think he had an actual fascist dictatorship in mind either. Was it Mussolini that said "fascism should correctly be called corporatism"?

[Tommaso]

Tommaso I agree with everything you have o say except that the film should be regarded as a product of it's time. I find it a film more relevant to now than to the 70's.

Yes, I didn't mean that it is solely a product of its time, and I find the film terrifyingly relevant right now, too.. What I had in mind was that a film like that could perhaps only have been made in the early 70s with all those discussions about sex, politics and liberation floating around. Discussions which in my view need to be revived, but no-one seems to bother, really.

I don't think he had an actual fascist dictatorship in mind either. Was it Mussolini that said "fascism should correctly be called corporatism"?

Don't know this quote, but in a perverted way it makes sense.

Another thing that comes to my mind right now: the use of the music of Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" in the film has sometimes been seen as an allusion to the Nazi regime (which hailed that work when it was first performed in 1937). But apart from the famous "O Fortuna" chorus, much of the piece consists of very 'licentious' medieval love lyrics set to music, celebrating the joy of sex, not dissimilar at all to the spirit of Paso's "Il Decameron" or "Canterbury Tales". I have to think about this a little, but the use of this piece might be relevant to the 'reversal' of the sexual utopianism of the Trilogy in "Salo".

[accatone]

I think a closer look at Pasolini's literal output is essential in understanding his final cinematographic work and makes it much easier to understand or better, feel his way of life and thought. Reading e.g. his Gramsci poem and other works from his days in Friaul to Raggazzi di Vita gives a useful introduction to his trilogy of love

Dedica

Fontana di aga dal me país.
A no è aga pí fres-cia che tal me país.
Fontana di rustic amòur.
(?)

- however, the "desire" of redemption is there from the beginning and while i am going through these pages ...

(...) Penso con pace al mio
scheletro, alla mia polvere,
nei millenni: e con pena agli scheleteri
viventi dei borghesi che cercano
il male - vero, il Possesso,
pretestuale, il Sesso - là dove la morte
è più imparziale nel disselvere.
(1962)

I am with Tommaso here that

he thought that such a liberated form of sex as depicted in these three films would only be possible in a liberated society, and for him that meant: an archaic, pre-industrial, or at the very least, non-capitalist society.

All this is can more or less be verified when reading his Scritti corsari that gives strong information on Pasolinies realtionship to the PCI, long haired Hippies, '68 et cetera. What i am trying to say is that i do not think we do Pasolini and Salo justice just talking in cinematic terms and in regard to his so called "sexual obsessions and lifestyle" - actually i think we can leave that to the conservative press and we all know that this is what happend to him most of his life. To come back to the first poem quoted above - i easily get the impression of an utterly christian romanticist (in a literal term). Its true that with Salo the fountain ran dry - a fountain that probably not just in the last years of his life lost its power but probably was poisend right from the beginning - for an artist of his generation and his attitude(!) he was doomed to fail in this very time. (that is of course the same time we live in today!).

[Toby Dammit]

It's very interesting and symbolic the absence of Ninetto in the film.. The encarnation, in the Trilogy (and in the previous movies) of innocence and non-corrupted life

What he says in the extras?

[colinr0380]

The fixation on a group of beautiful young people going through an almost arbitrary selection process throughout the film - some being chosen for sex, some for death, some for both - throws up to me all sorts of ideas from eugenics and selective breeding all the way up to something as seemingly benign as reality television with its own codified sets of bizarre rituals, brutal trials and cruel punishments, with rules known only to a few and subject to change at short notice! The brilliance of the film is that it manages to simultaneously be both specific in placing itself in a recognisable context and as an adaptation of an infamous piece of work and yet universal in describing ideas that can be applicable to any number of situations. Social, policital, economic, sexual, artistic: you can look at it from any number of angles and see the film through a different facet - with reference to Pasonlini's career, to his life beyond his films, to a comment specifically on Italian society, to a wider comment on consumerism and politics joining forces to ruin the world while a co-opted culture places a positive and palatable spin on the process.

Is this all explicit in intention by its maker and 'correct' in interpretation by its audience? Or does it depend, as all great films do, on what an audience member brings to the film to decide their reaction which may range from pure disgust/pleasure at the on screen extreme action to deeper consideration at how the work might apply in the outside world beyond the supposedly closed off world of the movie theatre.

That for me is the mark of a masterpiece, even if it might be a dark and hard to digest one.

I disagree that it's about reducing bodies to pieces of meat - Pasolini's view of sexuality is much more complex than that.
It seems to me that he's more concerned with constructing situations in which what we perceive to be "normal" behaviour is completely inverted. So sex is invariably accompanied by violence, tenderness by humiliation, the anus, mouth and vagina have the same function, and the buttocks are considered more expressive than the face. And this ties in with the film's most notorious scene, in which food and excrement become one and the same.

And that also leads on to ideas of self-enclosed practices sealed off from outsiders that ties in with the early scene of the quartet marrying each other's daughters. Inbreeding, or more correctly breeding within a select community, is just as insular an act as eating your own waste, just a product of a different biological act.

There may also be the suggestion that the insularity of the select group of leaders is damaging to society in its disconnectedness from any kind of outside world (yet at the same time it is in control of the processes by which that world is run) as eating your own faeces would be to a person's body (I haven't really checked into this but I don't suppose you'd get much nutrients from whatever was left from passing through the body the first time?!) It might be a wonderful dish for those who enjoy the taste but for a lot of others it means they have to eat shit for the pleasure of a few. Some may even grow to like the taste because they've never known anything else. It might be heavy handed but the idea of destroying the world's resources in order to make a profit or for personal glorification was going on long before Al Gore brought ideas of 'environmental sustainability' to popular attention!

At the risk of being repetitive, as a lot of this thread is already, I again have to say that the film needs to be regarded as a product of its time, not only with respect to what was going on in Italy, but to the whole idea of sexual politics/liberation in the wake of Neo-Reichian psychology et al in the late 60s/early 70s. While Pasolini certainly does not adapt any of the theories about sexual liberation then flowing around in any direct manner (he wasn't Otto Muehl, thankfully), he certainly saw sex as a tool of liberation (social, political) in the Trilogy. Or better: he thought that such a liberated form of sex as depicted in these three films would only be possible in a liberated society, and for him that meant: an archaic, pre-industrial, or at the very least, non-capitalist society. That doesn't necessarily imply a Marxist society, as Pasolini as far as I can see had already severed his ties with the political proponents of Marxism (the PCI), or rather: they severed the ties with him.

Anyway, in my view he realised that the possibility of ever achieving such a society or preserving it where it still existed for him (remember that San'aa film, made as an urgent address to the United Nations!) was impossible; instead he saw the consumerist neo-liberal capitalist society of his day (not to speak of ours) as the force that would take over the world and thus the idea of a truly liberated sexuality would become impossible.

Perhaps he could be thought of as a rejection of Marxism in the sense that it defined the workings of, and the exploitations inherent in, a capitalist society for a social change of collectivism that remained rather fuzzy and idealistic in concept and sadly open to its own outright abuses and dehumanisations in the face of 'new faces-yet-old class structures' putting it into practice for their own purposes.

At the risk of being faecitious (pardon the pun!), I don't mind the repetitiveness of the thread - it is that cyclical, self-destructive spiral apparent in the film itself that I think the thread is beautifully replicating! The "Circle of Words" if you like that explains and tries to justify atrocities after the fact as having an understandable 'reason' for being committed!

Much as we might tell ourselves to accept deaths in war for the 'greater good'.

[dr gennesier]

Yes, sadly enough it could only have been made in the 70's. I honestly never thought during the 70's that I would look back on that decade as one of the high points of filmaking. Just thought each decade would get better and better. I knew about the connection of Carmina Burana to Hitlers regime somewhere in the back of my brain, but did not know about the rest of the piece. I honestly didn't even notice it when watching the film, just registered the choral music. my familiarity with classical music is sadly not what it was. But that is an interesting connection and i wonder if he did put that in there to comment on the reversal of the trilogy.

[MichaelB]

But apart from the famous "O Fortuna" chorus, much of the piece consists of very 'licentious' medieval love lyrics set to music, celebrating the joy of sex, not dissimilar at all to the spirit of Paso's "Il Decameron" or "Canterbury Tales". I have to think about this a little, but the use of this piece might be relevant to the 'reversal' of the sexual utopianism of the Trilogy in "Salo".

For the record, the text of that particular section of Carmina Burana reads as follows:

Veris leta facies
mundo propinatur,
hiemalis acies
victa iam fugatur,
in vestitu vario
Flora principatur,
nemorum dulcisono
que cantu celebratur.
Ah!

Flore fusus gremio
Phebus novo more
risum dat, hac vario
iam stipate flore.
Zephyrus nectareo
spirans in odore.
Certatim pro bravio
curramus in amore.
Ah!

Cytharizat cantico
dulcis Philomena,
flore rident vario
prata iam serena,
salit cetus avium
silve per amena,
chorus promit virgin
siam gaudia millena.
Ah!

The merry face of spring
turns to the world,
sharp winter
now flees, vanquished;
bedecked in various colours
Flora reigns,
the harmony of the woods
praises her in song.
Ah!

Lying in Flora's lap
Phoebus once more
smiles, now covered
in multi-coloured flowers,
Zephyr breathes nectar-
scented breezes.
Let us rush to compete
for love's prize.
Ah!

In harp-like tones sings
the sweet nightingale,
with many flowers
the joyous meadows are laughing,
a flock of birds rises up
through the pleasant forests,
the chorus of maidens
already promises a thousand joys.
Ah!