Salo DVD Review

Set in fascist Italy at the end of the second world war, Salo is loosely based on the Marquis De Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. The film is divided into four chapters. The first is the Antechamber of Hell, which introduces the four protagonists; the Bishop, the President, The Duke and the Magistrate, and their pact to take eighteen teenagers to an isolated mansion, along with their daughters, guards and some prostitutes. Once at the mansion they explain to the adolescents that they are there to be used and abused in any way the four see fit. Next comes the Circle of Obsessions, where the group gather in the orgy room and one of the prostitutes tells her sordid life story, while the four libertines indulge in homosexual acts with some of the boys and a guard. The third chapter is the Circle of Shit. Guess what this one's about? You got it, a shit banquet, culminating in a beautiful arse contest. The final chapter, the Circle of Blood is concerned with torture. Amongst the horrors here are breast burning, eye gouging and the cutting off of a tongue.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s bleak, nihilistic vision of fascism is one of the most controversial movies of all time. It’s portrayal of torture, humiliation and degradation is hard to watch, but I’d wager that few actually head for the off button, such is the power of the film to draw you in and confront the dark corners of your own mind. Salo is not actually very explicit, most of the sex and violence is shown from a distance. The stories told by the prostitutes are both fascinating and shocking, and the peculiar humour in the film adds to its unsettling quality. Following Pasolini’s wonderful "Trilogy Of Life" (The Decameron (1970), The Canterbury Tales (1971) and The Arabian Nights (1974), he began what was to be his ”Anti-Trilogy Of Life“, of which Salo was the first, but Pasolini was murdered shortly after it’s completion.

An astonishing film by one of cinema history’s most individual and rebellious film-makers, it will continue to provoke and outrage for a long time to come. S.J.T.

Salo 1976

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini