Salo: Or the 120 Days of Sodom, a Painful Review

The film being reviewed here would’ve been rated X. Reader discretion is advised.

            For the longest time, I have been someone who shamefully has had to decline offers to go to the theater to see horror films due to a really weak stomach, especially when it comes to graphic violence and the tension that often surrounds it in the genre. I’ve slowly been coming out of my shell in this capacity. My methods for doing so aren’t the healthiest, being beer to numb the anxiety associated with them. Regardless, I’ve come around to some rather shocking films lately, and one that has been on my radar for the last couple of years has to have been the infamous shock-horror film Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

            In the film community, the film is regarded as very controversial, with some sects praising its provocative nature, while others consider it a disgusting, borderline “snuff”-like piece of media. This polarization alone made me very curious. So, after much time of getting myself hyped up, along with an ice-cold six-pack of Miller Lite, I finally sat down to witness the endurance-horror that is Salo.

            The story of Salo is incredibly simple, a loose adaptation of a French novel by the latter section of the name: The 120 Days of Sodom. In post-World War II fascist Italy, a group of innocent teenage boys and girls is rounded up by a small tribe of rich elites and taken to the stronghold in Northern Italy. It is here that the group of young boys and girls is subjected to physical, sexual, and psychological torture of all kinds.  What sets the film apart from other political thrillers, maybe, is that all of the crimes are shown on screen, with very little left to the imagination. This is where the crux of the controversy surrounding the film is. The film is just a couple of minutes under two hours long, features no leading protagonist other than the antagonists, the evil elites committing the crimes, and seems to feature torture as the leading aspect of the imagery. The film starts off slowly, without much shock, and rather, a hauntingly beautiful set of shots of Northern Italy as the fighting has finally stopped. There’s an eerie way the camera pans around the scenery, as though Pasolini understood the weight of the silence. There are a couple of brief deaths early on, but they don’t show much, and all is done with gunfire at a distance. It is once we arrive at the stronghold that the horrors begin.

            I won’t go into detail describing the torture, but I will give a general idea for the purposes of explaining what I believe the overarching theme and “point” of showing it was. Because I do believe there was a point, and one that remains painfully relevant today.

            The film revolves around “storytime”. This is where all of the teenagers are rounded up and brought to a large, richly designed parlor where the perpetrators cuddle up next to them while a mysterious woman, a companion of the criminals, softly and slowly tells tales of sexual depravity. The idea is that she “stirs” their imagination to get them more wound up for the crimes they would inevitably commit. Each section of the film moves from one storytime, with particular proclivities being explored in each one. During one of the early dinner scenes, the victims are raped on the floor in front of everybody, with cheering, laughing, and applause from the other elites as an almost-orgy ensues. Another dinner scene has a large buffet of human feces rolled out for everyone to consume. This was the most difficult scene for me to get through. The way the camera refuses to flinch away from the horror is sincerely something that made me question what the fuck I was doing in the moment. Poop, and the use of it as either food or a sexual prop, was something used throughout the majority of the central parts of the film. If it wasn’t being shown, it was being described in immense detail.

            Strict rules are placed on the teenagers from the get-go by their kidnappers. If they are caught breaking any of these rules, then they will be put to death. In one of the more morally decrepit sequences, the teenagers turn on another, one by one, giving away the petty crimes the others have committed in a vain effort to save their own lives. Multiple teenagers are murdered on screen throughout the film, and by the time the final scene arrives, those who did survive probably would’ve wished to have gone sooner. In the climax of Salo, the remaining teenagers are tortured to death in the courtyard of the stronghold. Candlewax, knives, genital mutilation, etc., etc. You get the terrible image. I’m the one who actually watched it.

            Two hours of some of the most horrific crimes against humanity, but I believe it wasn’t for nothing, and if anything, it is one of the strongest pieces of activist cinema I’ve ever seen. Pasolini has a clear message behind the shocking imagery, and the direction to keep the damn camera rolling long past the threshold for many is a testament to that. The film follows a group of elites who take advantage of the post-war fascist politics of Italy to cater to their depraved tastes. The commentary is on those powerful we “trust” and how they will only abuse their power to the absolute limits if we aren’t careful. The laughter and mocking nature of the criminals in this film remind me far too much of many of our own politicians today. What separates the early 20^th-century fascist criminals from ours, less than a hundred years later? In the last few months, we’ve had more of the Epstein controversy come to light with how the Trump administration has handled a blatant cover-up. Epstein was accused of crimes not too different than the ones committed in Salo. The very same for the P. Diddy case. Watching this film, these were the things that continued to pop into my head. Was Pasolini trying to make us squirm with angry graphic violence for attention? Or was he doing something else?

            I’d venture to argue he was holding a mirror up to his country at the time of its release in 1975. Italy has had a tough time staying away from its fascist leanings since the post-war era, and Pasolini wouldn’t have been the first of their own to voice worry and criticism to those in power above them. As far as activist cinema goes, I’ve seen far too many sappy, borderline offensive renditions of historical events, all for box office sales and points with the Democratic political party. This was not sappy. This was not filled with fake hope. This was real. This was far from entertaining, but if it was, I fear I would’ve missed the whole fucking point. The shocking violence that takes its time was intentional for us to think about our own moral compass, and how far these crimes would be allowed in our own judgment. These crimes happen behind closed doors around the world all the time. He’s just forcing us to deal with it while watching his film.

            About two-thirds of the way through the film, there’s a scene that has stuck with me since watching. More so than any of the other scarier ones. During the aforementioned sequence in which the teenagers turn on one another with their petty crimes, the elite chase the tales of hiding pictures and masturbating, all until they arrive at a crime that they find the most corrosive of their rules. One of the young teenage boys has been sneaking off at night to make love with one of the maids, a young black woman. I use different language here intentionally. The film has gone out of its way to show some of the most depraved crimes a human being can commit against another, and for a brief moment, you’re seeing two people trying to find hope within the horror they’re trapped within. When the two are broken up by the criminals, all of whom hold loaded guns, their fate appears sealed. That’s until the young teenage boy turns to face his aggressors and throws his fist in the air. Naked, alone, and completely vulnerable, he offers one final beacon of hope to his fellow peers. The entirety of the film, the villains strip their victims of their individuality. In this moment, he takes his back. The men shoot him and the girl to death, but not before their souls become a symbolic rebellion against the film’s leads.

            I gave the film three stars out of five on Letterboxd, and I stand by that rating. Does it go way too far in its portrayal of the violence? I honestly don’t know, probably. It does more than most endurance horror films do in that it has intention; it’s never done for no reason. There are brief moments of hope throughout the film where you almost think something could turn around, but it never does. And this is what makes it so provocative to the mind and spirit. I feel as though I came out of the viewing of this film a changed man. I experienced something not many people are comfortable experiencing, and those who do are cursed with those images for the rest of their lives, but for a purpose. A reminder that there is unimaginable evil in this world, and there is an element of personal responsibility in stopping it from spreading to the extent of what’s seen within.

            This is easily the most disturbing film I have ever seen. But I don’t regret watching it one bit. This, to me, is a piece of art that deserves to be respected and studied as such. Equivalent to a complex painting or portrait that requires time to digest and appreciate. I leave you with the thought that’s stayed in mind as the days have gone by since watching: I fear the message of this film has remained as relevant as ever, making it all that little bit more disturbing and borderline unwatchable. At the end of the day, I made myself and my weak stomach proud with this one. Will I ever touch this again? Hell no. But, dammit, am I proud.