REVIEW: DVD Release: Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom

Film: Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom
Release date: 29th September 2008
Certificate: 18
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Paolo Bonacelli, Laura Betti, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti
Genre: Crime/Drama/Horror
Studio: BFI
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Italy/France

Salo, or 120 Days Of Sodom is possibly the most controversial film of all time - banned in almost every country since its release, it has been condemned for its graphic scenes of rape, torture and murder. Adding to its notoriety, writer and director Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered - run over several times by his own car - shortly after its release.

Based on the book by the Marquis de Sade, it follows the tale of four perverse high-class members of society, the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate and the President, during Nazi occupied Italy in 1944.

After marrying one another’s daughters, they (with help of a group of militant young men and ageing prostitutes) capture and imprison nine young men and nine young women in a large mansion, forcing them to perform humiliating, degrading and debauched sexual acts.

We follow them through 120 days in four parts, starting with the aforementioned capture, before the Circle of Mania, where one of the ageing prostitutes parades around the hall, accompanied by another prostitute on piano, reminiscing about the early days of her occupation, while the four libertines, surrounded by their chosen slaves, eagerly listen to her every word, involving uneasy stories about underage prostitution.

We then enter the Circle of Shit, a truly horrific section of the film. The second ageing prostitute tells her tales of men in nappies, and the consumption of excrement.

The final part of the film, the Circle of Blood, sees the guards and slaves married in a mass wedding. Accepting their fate, the slaves begin to turn on one another, telling the libertines of rules being broken, which includes the possession of photos, prayers, inter-slave relations and going to the toilet. The wrong doers are then tortured in hideous and extreme ways, to which the masters take in turns to watch in voyeuristic fashion...


The film quickly unsettles. With about three words spoken in the opening fifteen minutes, you sense the entrapment and uneasiness the director’s portraying. Maintaining this throughout, the dialogue is scarce, but when it does arrive, it’s undeniably affecting. The prostitutes’ tales, and tirades from the masters makes for uncomfortable listening, yet, in parts, the dialogue flows almost poetically and song like, augmented by the uneasy visuals.

The acting is believable, and you feel for every one of the characters, as they are forced to bear the unbearable. During the Circle of Shit section of the film, you witness two of the most difficult scenes in cinema history. Unable to control herself, the “bride” begins sobbing. This disgusts The Duke, who strips her and throws her to the ground, unbuckling his trousers and defecating on the floor before forcing her to eat his “gift” with a spoon. This brings the film’s most infamous scene. Excited by what they have witnessed, the rest of the group demand a ‘feast’ be served that evening - three minutes of open-mouthed, look away footage, as huge platters of faeces are served to everyone, the slaves crying and balking as they eat, while the masters, their guards and prostitutes lap it up with gusto.

Standout performances come from Elsa De Giorgi and Hélène Surgère as the two prostitutes showing child-like excitement at the revolting stories they tell; their ageing faces plastered with make up giving them a ghostly appearance. Paolo Bonacelli as the Duke and Umberto Paolo Quintavalle as the Magistrate brilliantly represent the debauched element of the film, joyfully deploying human suffering and humiliation and thriving in the rape and torture of others.

Playing the part of innocence, Dori Henke puts in a strong performance as the reluctant faeces eating female slave. Although she does little more than sob, the scene where she cries for her mother and is mocked and beaten is genuinely disturbing.

The film is sometimes quite tricky to follow, with parts of the film jumping from scene to scene without warning, leaving you struggling to follow who is who and what is happening to whom. However, the film’s main strength is its ability to provoke, forcing the viewer to question beyond the events that unfold on screen - an extreme representation of power bringing corruption; the divide between social classes; and the atrocities people with power can get away with, still to this day.

It is meant to be shocking and extreme, and it is a strong and powerful film that stays with you, unable to forget what you have witnessed. You fully understand why it was (and still is) banned, yet you can’t help but appreciate its artistic merit.

Pasolini was a visionary and a bold, daring one at that. It is only fitting for a man whose whole life was surrounded by controversy that his final piece of work be his most notorious.


Art-house cinema in its truest form - and an art-house masterpiece. However, for all its brilliance, its sadistic nature makes it a one-time only viewing experience. JDU