From an aesthetic standpoint the film is beautiful, vibrant, ethereal, hallucinogenic, which is an amazing contrast from the sadism and graphic violence portrayed. The scene where the girl has to use a spoon to eat feces was brilliantly shot. If another director made this film it wouldn’t have been even half as good. I won’t go into the film’s message, story, or philosophy but I do think Salo was Pasolini’s masterpiece.
@Steve – I don’t think he was trying to get you involved in any of the characters, I think he made this film more as a form of experession and a message.
I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it yet but Pasolini also made this film as a metaphor for what he felt the younger generation was doing to the coulture at the time (he felt like they were raping the culture). He felt they were changing too much and totally violating everything
Rodney Welch, Every time this thread gets started up again your comment makes me laugh. Thanks for that.
How do I get a hold of a copy of the film in Australia?
@Steve – Ryan is wright, the film has far too many characters to dedicate exposition time, it’s not the point at all.
@Ryan – About the youth methaphor, Pasolini said that himself or it’s your interpretation? On that angle, it actually looks like those old men are getting revenge on the youth for ruining the culture, which kinda makes me dislike the film now.
edit: just realized thread is one year old lol
@ Ary. It’s a VERY bad translation.
More a lament for a lost generation which might also include the generation before, but that’s a hasty translation too. It would be closer to the original to say that he felt the culture was raping them – with a certain degree of consent.
Yes, it indeed obtained what Pasolini intended, I was discusted. The vile acts of perverse behaviour by a set of lets say gutsy actors, was enough for me to agree that fascism is a fatalistic, inhuman political act, (which I already knew). But with all its acts of obsenity, were all the symbolic acts of sexual violations really that neccseary? I found it a bit dull and overdone, confined to the one place, the film seemed to drag and got repetative, there was a lack of humanized relation between the viewer and any particular character, which caused the violence and abuse to be less effective..whats all the fuss about? why is this so great?
i agree that its excessive, but without it the metaphor wouldn’t work. plus some scenes really really disturbed me much more than any terror movie, i think it’s the most cruel and pervert movie i have seen.
ANOTHER thread about “Salo”?
Yikes. This film really gets to MUBI
Thanks David K. for your post about Sade and the actual book. More people ahve heard of it that actually read it — or attenmpted a reading as this unifnished manuscript os really heaygoing.
As I have pointed out in “Salo” thread after “Salo” thread after “Salo” thread Pasolini wasn’t making this stuff up. In point of fact he dramatized onlya tiny sliver of the scenes Sade cocktailed up in his "120 Day.s’ What he DID do was recntextualize it by settign the tableaux in the waning days of Mussolini’s reign. This period has always fascinated Pasolini and he wanted to show that the horrors Sade depicted are actual political pracitc by those in power.
eg.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/sep/09/tom-mccarthy-video
70’s era Italian fascists thought Pasolini was going to specifically referecne them, so they tried to steal the negative — taking only parts of the film and parts of Fellini’s “Casanova” as well in the process.
Not satisfied they had Pasolini murdered.
Ever since the vitim of this murder has been blamed for it, because of his last film “Salo.”
You make a great point David. I haven’t read Sade’s book but I know it is far, far, more explicit than Pasolini’s film. I’d even venture to say that Pasolini let the audience off light. I won’t go into detail but the book is much, much worse.
Yes, it is . . . even with the final sections only in skeletal form.
SALO would a more effectively damning of generational oppression (which I think is ultimately its deepest point—a nihilistic “scorched earth” policy against the sewn seeds, a nation’s youth) if the teen non-actors had been cast and directed with any eye towards them expressing any affect whatsoever. As the actual product stands though, I have to doubt whether such a statement was even Pasolini’s intention…but’s it’s my best stab at “meaning” in the film. Impermeable, impossible, uncriticizable….irrelevant?
Steve Oerkfitz
I don’t find Salo offensive. Just dull and unmoving. I watch it and go yeah yeah I get it I get it, but it never moves me. None of the characters exist as characters-no one is given a personality, I never identify with anyone or feel sorry for those victimized because I never once am allowed to see them as real people.