Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (Oedipus Rex, Accattone, Medea, The Canterbury Tales, Teorema, The Decameron) died a few months after making Salò, having been ran over, by some counts up to three times, by his own Alfa Romeo. Some speculate that his murderer, a seventeen year-old male, was contracted by unknown individuals enraged by the director’s latest cinematic effort, demanding nothing less than absolute reconciliation. Ironically, the director’s reputation as a mastermind of cinema preceded him in that his 1964 production, The Gospel According to St Matthew, is heralded by some to be the best depiction of the life of Christ. Regardless, Salò is far removed from the indictments by some as being a mere exercise in excessive sadism and a mere pretext to create pornography. Upon closer inspection, the work forces its viewer to contemplate issues of politics, morality, philosophy, and psychology, while permitting much interpretative leniency in so doing.
In 1944, four dignitaries, simply referred to as the Duke (Paolo Bonacelli, The Stendhal Syndrome, Caligola), the Bishop (Giorgio Cataldi), the Magistrate (Umberto Paolo Quintavalle), and the President (Aldo Valletti), kidnap eighteen vestal teenagers, nine of each sex, all of which are deemed to be perfect human specimens, and take them to an isolated area of northern Italy, which is protected by guards, thus forbidding anyone from leaving or entering. During the three day retreat, the four noblemen conduct routine storytelling sessions as narrated by four prostitutes. Each speaker’s theme is based around a parody of Dante’s Inferno: Anteinferno, Circle of Manias, Circle of Shit, and Circle of Blood. During this time, as well as any other that appease the gentlemen, the aristocrats act upon any whim, urge, or impulse, regardless how corrupt which is oftentimes directed at one of the hostages and involves some form of paraphilia. At the end of the designated period, each libertine takes turns executing their captives as the others look voyeuristically on.
Pasolini’s Salò is, for those who need social and moral rectification for the work, a denunciation of fascism in Italy during World War II. (The director sets the novel 160 years after the text’s reported events and condenses its timeframe by over 400 percent.) However, the extent upon which the events in the film represent the gratuitous nature of corrupt power are often argued to be excessive and exploitative. For those versed in the director’s works, his style is noticeably absent from this film, obviously with set cause. With this in mind, once reviewed, many of the more gruesome scenes are shot at a cold, morally-objective distance as much of the soundtrack is removed prior to the camera diverting its glance, thus allowing–not the screen–but the viewer’s mind to elicit the proceeding events. In this regard, many who condemn the film on this basis are engaging in a hypocritical act of self-referentiality because it is the images which they themselves are evoking that such critics disclose as being repulsive and reprehensible.
Yes, what occurs in during set period of torture and sadism (as well as masochism toward those in power) are some of the most visceral, intense depictions of violence ever conceived (only American writer Samuel Delany revivals the French writer’s scope in this regard). However, the apathy which the camera approaches the material forces the viewer to consider why and how such situations, that is, outside their political import, could be executed. The work cannot be legitimately viewed as immoral depravity via cinematic indulgence by the filmmaker anymore than it can be considered pornography because the manner in which both aspects, the abusive and sexual, are depicted are completely devoid of any hedonistic form of enjoyment for the viewer. Thus, the work is stripped in this respect in order to allow the audience to freely mediate upon the genesis and motives of the four dignitaries and the circumstances which they evoke and how those involved contend with said situations. Also of note, Pasolini removed twenty-five minutes of the film in order to aide pacing and structure. Thus, if the work were merely an exercise in perverted extravagance, Pasolini would have permitted the film to retain its original 145-minute running time.
It would be wise for those not well versed in Marquis de Sade’s works to note that Sade was a soldier (who fought in the Seven Years War), was the product of an elitist education, a husband to a devoted wife (during the second part of his life), and the father of three children. In lieu of an extended prison record, he achieved a high post in government but nonetheless resigned on moral grounds prior to dying in utter destitution. This isn’t to imply that Sade’s namesake proclivities were any less malevolent or are morally rectifiable, but when placed alongside the fact that he spent a large portion of his life in prison for his acts of degradation but nonetheless passionately continued his academic pursuits atop writing thousands upon thousands of pages of, not only fiction, but tracts upon religion, aesthetics, and politics, perhaps a rash categorization of the writer and thinker as absolute is not only an injustice to the French philosopher, but also to his would-be audience.
Interestingly, the text upon which Pasolini’s film is based was never completed. Sade outlined the work in four parts, only the first of which was completed (the original, completed manuscript was lost). Thus, the Italian filmmaker’s climax obviously takes liberties but nonetheless carries the events of the story to their logical conclusion, leaving the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions upon the psychology, philosophy, and morality of what the individual just witnessed (much of which the writer allows his various characters to discuss and deliberate upon in the text but, considering Pasolini’s resume, he wisely chose to permit his audience its own cognitive freedom in this respect). What the audience is left with is the chasm now established by the libertines because, as G. W. F. Hegel outlined and Friedrich Nietzsche concluded, a master–by definition–must have a slave but, what becomes of the master once he’s successfully completed his role as such?
What intrigued me most about the film is Pasolini’s Nietzschian inversion (which was present in Sade’s text), not only of morality, but of psychology. We watch as one of the victims, unlike her peers who have come to terms with their fascist conditions, continues to naively revolt in the face of the omnipotent repercussions. The audience begins to become enraged at the individual for her obstinacy and, as a consequence, ironically longs for her punishment.
Regardless of one’s assessment of whether Pier Paolo Pasolini succeeded to aptly skirt audience abrasion and achieved creating an engaging work of cinema based upon one of the most notorious texts ever written, Salò remains one of the most confrontational, at least in discussion, works ever placed on celluloid. Not surprisingly, the film is reputed to be one of the most obscure titles to locate but the resourceful cineophile will be exponentially rewarded for his or her efforts after having viewed Pasolini’s final curtain call.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
