Reviewed by Stuart O'Connor
Stars Paolo Bonacelli, Giogio Cataldi, Uberto Paulo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti,
Caterina Boratto, Elsa De Giorgi, Helene Surgere, Sonia Saviange | Written by Pier Paolo Pasolini
UK certification 18 | UK RRP £22.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 112 minutes | Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Is Salo the most controversial film ever made? Quite possibly, seeing as it is still banned in Australia. However, Pasolini's notorious final work is certainly regarded as one of the most disturbing — based as it is on the book The 120 Days of Sodom, by the Marquis de Sade.
Pasolini — a poet and novelist as well as a filmmaker — transposes the setting of De Sade's book from 18th century France to the last days of Mussolini's fascist regime in Nazi-occupied Italy in 1944. Four aristocratic and powerful libertines — the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate and the President — kidnap 18 young men and women. With the aid of four middle-aged prostitutes, the men subject their victims to all manner of torture — both physical and psychological — and sexual abuse and humiliation. The film is divided into four "circles", a la Dante's epic poem, The Inferno — the antechamber of hell, the circle of obsessions, the circle of shit and the circle of blood. We witness these teenagers being raped, forced to act like dogs, fed faeces (the actors actually ate a mixture made from chocolate, biscuits, condensed milk and marmalade), whipped, sodomised, scalped, hanged and branded.
No, it's not an enjoyable film; I don't see any way a reasonably normal person could derive pleasure from viewing it. But Salo is, nonetheless, an important work. It shows what happens when absolute power corrupts absolutely, and how degraded humanity can become when evil is allowed to go unchecked. Even by today's standards, it's still a shocking, unpleasant film to watch. Is Salo, ultimately, the work of a Marxist (which Pasolini was known to be) warning about the dangers of fascism, and the corrupting influence of power, or simply the debauched work of a pervert? That's up to the viewer to decide. Sadly, though, viewers in Australia — where the Banning Bureau said Salo was "refused classification" because "it offends against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults [and] contains gratuitous, exploitative and offensive depictions of sexual activity accompanied by abhorrent practices" — will not get the chance to decide for themselves.
EXTRAS ***** The BFI has really done itself proud with this exhaustive array of bonus features. First up is 48-page illustrated booklet that includes a newly-commissioned essay by Sam Rohdie, Italian film scholar and author of The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini, a Sight & Sound feature by Gideon Bachmann incorporating his on-set diary, a 1979 review of the film by Gilbert Adair, correspondence charting the film's troubled history, a Pasolini biography by Italian film specialist Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, photographs of Pasolini at work on set, and more. The first disc contains the film — beautifully remastered fron the original Italian restoration negatives — in two versions: the original Italian, with English subtitles, and a dubbed English version. There is also the original Italian trailer, plus a music video called Ostia: The Death of Pasolini, by the band Coil. The second disc has: a 2008 documentary called Open Your Eyes!, which features an interview with Pasolini on the set of the film; a documentary called Walking With pasolini, which explores the meaning of the film; Fade to Black, a documentary exploring the power and relevance of Salo; Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die, the 1981 documentary about the life of Pasolini; and Ostia, a 1987 short film about Pasolini's final days, by director Julian Cole and starring Derek Jarman.