SALO:
THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (1975) –
To tell the story behind the mammoth novel on which this movie was based is an article in and of itself: How the “Divine Marquis” wrote it out in miniature print, on strips of paper that were glued together and secreted away in his cell in the Bastille. How the manuscript was lost during the storming of the Bastille, and how Sade reportedly “wept tears of blood” at the loss. How the manuscript was discovered decades later, published, and how it endured seizures by censors and customs of various countries. But this review is about the movie, so all the research on the book is on your shoulders, dear reader. Salo was Pasolini’s last film, he was previously notorious for his filmed version of “The Gospel According to Matthew” (he was an outspoken Atheist), and previously explored the joys of sex in his so called “Trilogy of Life” series – filmed versions of “The Decameron,” “The Canterbury Tales,” and “The Tales of 1001 Nights.” Salo was his exploration of the horrors of sex, not to mention violence, fascism and consumerism… and it goes a little somethin’ like this… One day in Northern Italy - during the end of the Second World War and the retreat of Mussolini – a Duke (Bonacelli), a Banker (Quintavalle), a Judge (Valleti), and a Bishop (Cataldi) gather in the village of Salo along the placid shores of Lake Garda. The four jaded friends decide that they need a last blast of fun and abandon before the Allied Forces close in and finish them off – a final Apocalyptic Toga Party, if you will. To get this shindig started, the four men get their Personal Guard to grab their own daughters and have them brought before them. The Duke marries the Banker’s daughter, the Banker marries the Judge’s daughter, and the Judge, the Duke’s daughter. If you’re thinking His Excellency the Bishop is going to be left out of the mix, you’d be dead wrong, since he decides he’ll marry his OWN daughter. Having gotten hitched to the young beauties, the foursome decides that monogamous marital bliss in not nearly enough for their Final Fatal Soiree. Remembering that they are high ranking figures in the Italian Fascist Government, and that they have access to dozens of armed thugs, pimps and procuresses, they send out the aforementioned goon squad to rope up several young, attractive boys and girls and decide which unlucky contestants will wind up spending 120 wild days and nights with “The Gents” at an abandoned mansion in the neighboring rural hamlet of Marzabotto. After close inspection of the captive teenyboppers, the Fearsome Foursome select nine comely lads and nine lovely lasses and spirit them off in troop transports to their hive of villainy in Marzabotto. One boy is killed in a daring escape attempt, and is eulogized by a lame joke delivered by the Banker – the first of many lame jokes and one of the many soul-crushing horrors of Salo. Upon arrival at the mansion, ground rules are laid out: Any kids caught having boy on girl sex will suffer the loss of a limb. Anyone caught getting busy with the kitchen staff – especially the comely black maid (Ines Pellegrini) with no name – will be slain. As a matter of fact, anybody caught getting their freak on without their captor’s supervision and approval will be killed. And now for the festivities… During the one hundred and twenty days of this Hooligan’s Holiday, the captive boys and girls are subjected to that most unholy of tortures: Spoken Word “Vagina” Monologues delivered by one of four aged Courtesans. Musical accompaniment by pianist Sonia Saviange serves as salt on the wound. As one of the weather-beaten hags recounts a bizarre sexual encounter of her youth – abduction from her family and conscription into a brothel via a mock wedding ceremony – one of the Gents is inspired to re-enact the episode on a large scale. Fake weddings are arranged, whose conjugal consummations are always interrupted by a Gent, who mounts the husband or wife and does the deed himself. When one courtesan recounts a time she was forced to run around on all fours like a dog, the Gents decide to stage an (prescient) enactment of an Alpo commercial – with the kids as the dogs and the Gents as Lorne Greene. The old urban myth of razors and nails in Hallowe’en candy is also invoked when one of the Gents gives his “pooch” a wedge of cheese with a secret ingredient. Fearing another round of Fascist Flavored Spalding Gray monologues from the Courtesans, one of the girls commits suicide and is spared the indignity of hearing another one of the banker’s crummy jokes. After forty days of what’s considered “general fetishes,” the Gents and Courtesans up the stakes to that favorite of oral deviances, coprophagia (shit-eating). Pasolini anticipates the Mr. Hankey gag by thirty years when – after a courtesan tells a saucy shit eating tale – the Duke decides to treat one of the girls to his own homebrewed toilet stew. The rest of the Gents decide that all should take part in ingesting this delicacy, and orders the kitchen staff to take a massive tub of stools – to be accumulated over the next week or so – and arrange a succulent Shit Banquet. Later in the dining room, the entire company is treated to a Devil’s Tower-sized mound of gelatinous feces served on a large silver platter. Equal portions are doled out. The kids gag in agony as the Gents and Courtesans wolf it down like chocolate mousse. It is during this feast that the Judge reveals his plans to marry one of the boys – a strawberry blonde named Sergio – even as he shovels spoonfuls of shite into the mouth of his bride to be. A final round of coprophilic spoken word is delivered by a Courtesan,
and the
Shit sequences are punctuated by a low key “golden shower” episode
between the Duke and one of his favorites, a girl named Antoniska, while the
Gent’s wives are literally left to stew in a tub of… leftovers. The following scene anticipates the subtle sadism of VH1’s “The Surreal Life” by three decades, when the Gents preside over a game show of sorts to determine which boy or girl has “The Nicest Ass.” The contestants are arranged in a ring in a darkened room – asses out and towels disguising their heads. The winner will be shot in the head. When ready, the Gents enter the room and inspect the behinds by flashlight. One Gent warns the other that in spite of whether one prefers a male or female ass, one must be unbiased and favor the aesthetic value of the ass over the sex. A ravishing rump is selected, the house lights go up, and an olive-skinned youth named Franco stands revealed as the “lucky contestant.” A pistol is aimed at his head, and the sound of an empty chamber rings throughout the large room. The Bishop stands satisfied that the threat of execution, repeated a thousand times over, is greater than a thousand buggering sessions. Not all the festivities are so morbid. The company of boys and
girls are cheered up by the announcement of a multiple wedding
ceremony presided over by the Bishop.
The Gents arrive in drag. The Judge takes his selected “groom” Sergio,
as his fellows take their favorite boys arm in arm and begin the wedding procession – with
musical virtuoso Sonia Saviange riffing on accordion. As the Bishop solemnly
recites the wedding liturgy and dispenses the rings, his altar boy – in
an amazing reversal of covert Catholic “tradition” – sidles
up to the Bishop and cops a feel of HIS ass. After discovering several of the youths breaking the cardinal law of freaking without adult supervision, he threatens each one with execution. One after the other is spared as one couple rats out the other. Finally, one of the stool pigeons reveals that Ezio, the Gents’ Captain of the Guard, has come down with a case of Jungle Fever. Ezio has been having an affair with the maid – the sole black character in the film who (surprise, surprise) has no dialogue. The Bishop wakes up the Duke, Banker and Judge. They converge on Zero’s room and find him and the maid merrily meddling in miscegenation. Caught in the act, Ezio jumps to his feet, and raises his fist in a defiant Communist Party/Black Power salute. Ezio and the maid are rewarded for their efforts with a hail of lead pellets. All things must come to an end, and the Gents gather the Courtesans, Thugs and Kids together for a final winnowing of the seeds from the chaff. Several of the kids are rewarded ribbons, and others aren’t. Those that receive the ribbons win the grand prize of returning with the Gents to scenic Salo – to witness the fall of Mussolini’s Fascist regime (and maybe receive some kind of kooky prize.) One of the kids not rewarded with a ribbon demands to know what will happen to him and the others. The Duke threatens him with a punishment suitable for some imagined crime he committed. The Banker meanwhile, smiles menacingly. The ribbon-less kids are spared the ear-grating agony of one of the Banker’s lame gags, and are released into the sweet relief of torture by garrote, stakes, skewers, brands, and summary execution. The Gents’ wives (and grooms) are not spared as they suffer at the devices laid out in the mansion’s grand quadrangle. The Courtesan Musician, for unstated reasons, leaps from a window to her death. Each of the Gents takes a turn viewing the destruction in the quadrangle through binoculars. The Judge kicks back to some soothing strains of “Carmina Burana” as the Duke, the Bishop, and the Banker perform a kick-line dance for his amusement. At that moment, one of the surviving youths leaps up and challenges
the Gents: “Now
wait just one goddamned second! You abduct us from our families, carry us off
to some godforsaken mansion, beat us, bugger us, leash us like dogs, feed us
shit sandwiches, you perform incest on your daughters – even after you
married them off! THEN you marry US off, bugger the brides, grope the grooms,
marry off a few more of us, feed us more shit, skewer us, garrote us, and… and
the spoken word shit! DEAR GOD, THOSE HORRIBLE VAGINA MONOLOGUES! You do all
of this in spite of the fact that the Allies have you cornered, and you’ll
all be brought to justice! What… WHAT KIND OF HUMAN BEINGS ARE YOU?!” Salo is available on VHS from Water Bearer Films in the U.S.. It was released on DVD, but all copies were almost immediately recalled. It was banned completely in Australia up until 2000. Needless to say, Salo was one of the most controversial films of its day, inspiring both critical acclaim and revulsion. And rather than receiving a Palme D’Or, a Golden Globe, or an Oscar, Pier Paolo Pasolini received several deadly blows to the head from a male hustler somewhere on the back streets of Rome not long after Salo’s release. To think Mel Gibson thought shadowy forces were out to get him for his Grand Guignol moment! So, you’re probably wondering what I, your Movie Maven, think about this movie. Many people have addictions. They can range from recreational drugs to sitting in front of the Xbox and playing some of the gorier games that seem to my imagination as interactive offspring of Salo. Well, this film was my addiction for eight years. I rented and viewed it on video incessantly, some times for the viewing displeasure of friends. One friend actually stormed out of the room. I finally defeated my addiction after I saw Salo on the big screen at the Anthology Film Archives in Downtown Manhattan, the tail end of a Pasolini Retrospective on October 30, 2000. Good thing too, because that was the same year I got married. The worst Mrs. Timbershaft had to deal with was me blurting out “Saaa-LO-o-o-o-o-o-oh!” in a Tourette’s -like manner for a week or two afterward. Going cold turkey’s a bitch. But did I enjoy Salo? Did I find the brutal episodes arousing?
No and no. This movie was intended by Pasolini as a deadening
of eroticism – a response
to contemporary fascist kink movies like Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s
The Night Porter. And deaden my passions it did. Time and again I would view
this film, but unlike your typical renter of pornography, I watched Salo to
brutally crush my sexual longings rather than inflame them. Why? I dunno, just
felt like
it at the time. It was like experimenting with a drug, and then being irrationally
ensnared by it even though you know damn well that numerous exposures could
ruin you.
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