OR THE DAYS OF SODOM SALO (120 ) Movie Review

Sixteen children—eight boys and eight girls—are kidnapped by Fascists in World War II Italy. After arriving at a secluded, palatial villa, the children are bound, stripped, trained like dogs to follow strict orders, and then are systematically subjected to sexual humiliation, sadomasochistic torture, rape, indescribable violence, and finally savage, unbearable mutilation. Based on a novel by the Marquis de Sade (you didn't guess?) and adapted by the director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Salo is one of the most genuinely horrifying, deeply disturbing experiences in cinema history. Far from an exploitation film, however, this final film of Pasolini's is, in this viewer's opinion, at least, a deeply felt depiction of what Pasolini believed to be the essence—and the logical, final destination of—the mentality that embraces fascism, that mindset's depraved descent into absolute, unchecked, limitless power. Pasolini cuts right to the chase; first the trains are made to run on time, and then, he convincingly argues, comes this. Simultaneously great and unwatchable, Salo is a work of art that needs to exist and continue to be available as a part of this century's legacy, but it's also an experience that I could never recommend to another human being. I can acknowledge its importance and perhaps even its brilliance, but to this day it remains the only film in my experience that I genuinely wish I had never seen.

NEXT STOP … Night and Fog, Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, Shoah

1975 117m/C IT Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto P. Quinavalle, Paolo Bonacelli; D: Pier Paolo Pasolini; C: Tonino Delli Colli; M: Ennio Morricone. VHS, LV FCT, HHE, WBF