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Bookmark this pageSaló, o le Centoventi Giornate di Sodoma (1975)
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Pasolini's last movie before his being brutally murdered may now seem strangely prophetic of his death, but it is undeniably a thoroughly objectionable piece of work. Transporting De Sade's novel to Mussolini's Fascist republic of 1944, Pasolini observes with unflinching gaze the systematic humiliation and torture of beautiful young boys and girls, herded into a palatial villa by various jaded, sadistic members of the wealthy upper classes. According to the director, the story was meant to be a metaphor for Fascism, but the revolting excesses shown on screen (shit-eating and sexual violence included), coupled with the fact that the victims seem complaisant in, rather than resistant to, their ordeals, suggest murkier motives in making the movie. It's very hard to sit through and offers no insights whatsoever into power, politics, history or sexuality. Nasty stuff.Author: GA
User reviews of this film
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- GravesendJoe said...
- Posted on May 04 2010 22:39 If you accept this film as a metaphor for the dehumanising effects of fascism and capitalism, as a film imbued with a genuinely nightmarish and fatalistic worldview, then I think it has its merits. And isn't the victims' apparent complicity in the crimes inflicted upon them - which the Time Out reviewer suggests points to "murkier motives" - a comment on how groups of people acquiesce in the face of their own exploitation? The sort of oppositional culture that modernist films like Salo represents is perhaps a last refuge for those who find much of popular culture oppressive in its one-dimensionality. When so much of it falls aesthetically, politically, etc in line with the dominant values, the Pasolini's of this world are vital.
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- mr.mike said...
- Posted on Oct 16 2007 22:51 I was fully prepared to be shocked. An hour into it , I began reading a newspaper.
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Cast & crew
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Producer: Alberto Grimaldi
Cast: Paolo Bonicelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto P Quintavalle full cast
Duration: 117 mins
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