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Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1977)

October. 03,1977
|
5.8
|
NR
| Drama Horror

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

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Reviews

westsideschl
1977/10/03

I too was torn between giving an eight and one star rating so somewhere in-between. Yes, the visuals are excessive, i.e. forcing people to eat fecal stuff (actually chocolate - phew); physical torture; full nudity (male & female); some sex including a bit out of the mainstream, but camera angles were such that nothing was shown (left to imagination, etc.). There actually was a thematic point to the film's visceral story, illustrated by the following comments: We see the relationship of power using sex to treat others like a commodity. The anarchy of power can be seen in fascism. Power can do what it wants, and what it wants is completely arbitrary. It is dictated by its eccentric needs which elude common logic. Power people are enamored with their own identity. For a film over 40 years old it strangely has some current applicability, i.e. I kept being reminded of a present day U.S. political leader.

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Lee Eisenberg
1977/10/04

Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma" ("Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom" in English) turned out to be his final movie, and got released a few weeks after his murder. Since he was known for movies that riled the authorities, this was a natural choice for him. While the main thing that one notices is the shock value, Pasolini noted that he intended the movie as a look at the relation between power and its subjects. Indeed, for what reason did Mussolini turn Italy into a police state but to let the ruling class be able to do whatever they wanted? To be certain, the middle-aged prostitutes who tell the young men stories to sexually arouse them are the equivalent of bread and circuses.Basically, it's a story of humanity's base impulses taken to their horrific extremes. It's easy to view this as one of the most disgusting movies ever filmed, but Pasolini made it to indict fascism and Italy's ruling class in general. I recommend it, but only watch it if you have a strong stomach.

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Cyberknight Masao Kawata
1977/10/05

I was told this was a classic film. As a classic, I expected it to be either aside from the mainstream or defining of a genre. It manages to be both, actually. It is definitely not mainstream, because of the subject portrayed and the way it is shown. It also defines a genre that is, also definitely, not part of the mainstream (somewhat, luckily)."Salo" is about a group of perverts (male and female) that exploits the Nazi-Fascist war machine to kidnap, torture and kill young people... And that's all. It has no plot, it's just a portrait. There is no character development, there is no story whatsoever and there is no point of anything for any reason.There is a lot of background story (and History) behind the scenes, but not a single drop of it is put on screen. If an alien civilisation picked this film to watch, without knowing anything about WWII, they wouldn't understand anything shown (except, maybe, that the human species is one of the dumbest in the whole universe, eating their faeces and killing their youngsters for nothing, not even for the fun of it).It's amazingly boring, slow paced and pointless in everything. The villains have no motivation other than sexual and murderous drive to act, and they act absolutely randomly along the whole film. Every time one of the victims die, they mock the survivors by counting them, making one believe that there will be some kind of "whatever" when the count goes down to one, but that never happens, as the film runtime just ends and everybody left is taken outside to be tortured and slaughtered. Considering that on the previous scenes the victims were forced to eat and bathe in faeces, I guess dying was actually a happy ending! It plays like a mockumentary or a stupid video clip. The acting is terrible, both on the villains' and on the victims' side, some of them can't even hide a smile while they are being oppressed (as there is no background story on screen, at first it made me think they were playing some kind of game, before the film's beginning).And when you think it's finally over and that it cannot get any worse, the film cuts to two young Nazi soldiers, who join hands and start dancing... So, the message is, Nazis are are people, too, and can love (each other, at least) like everybody else does...?! "Salo" is not only boring, it's pretentious, amateurishly scripted and devoid of any enjoyable content, unless you are a hardcore fan of coprophagy (oh no, at least, it's fake).

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jake-law123
1977/10/06

Despite my rating, this is actually a well made film. It has high production values, decent acting, stunning sets, and great sound. In the technical aspects it is well directed. Regardless, it was one of the most tormenting films I've ever seen. It was such a struggle to get through. I was checking how much longer I had left like seventeen times a minute, because I just couldn't take it.This is a film that's told smart, executed well, but the portrayal itself is horrible. Long story short, fascism is wrong, end of story. But like the Purge, it's not enough to just say it, we gotta go through a whole mess of stuff to show you why it is. Basically fascists sexually torture nine boys and nine girls for four months in a mansion. And we're talking urinating in mouths, eating poop, three way intercourse, ejaculating on each other etc. The whole film is literally just scene after scene of that. It's nonstop. All of that, as we constantly are forced to endure stories about people going through the same stuff, but enjoying it. This film loves to emphasize each character's feelings on each scene. When they eat poop, the film describes in detail everybody's experiences with eating poop, and why they are fine with it. In a strange sense, it's well told and has some interesting insight, but that does not make it any easier to watch.Honestly though, the film as a whole is kind of boring. It really is just a matter of how shocking can we be. When it's not being depraved, it's just people in a room telling stories. There's really not much else to it.The problem with the film is that since it's on its own sick mindset, we as an audience aren't really on the same page, so we're just seeing random acts of violence, and not really anything else. There's no clear picture or goal the film projects, just that. David Lynch films do the same thing, but at least he gives us enough symbolism to let us know what to extract from the film. This one is just showing us that these people get off on this stuff, and that's it.One thing I found interesting was how the perspective is of the fascists themselves instead of the victims. Instead of being a standard psychological thriller about escaping, it's simply just these fascist's sick perversions and their opinions on it. They're the main characters, and they're the ones we follow. I thought that was rather interesting.At the end of the day, this is not one of the worst movies I've ever seen, but it's one of the hardest films I've ever had to sit through. It's pretty easy to hate this film. I don't hate it, but I would never want to watch this again, or would never recommend it to anybody ever. It's a well told film with an interesting insight, but it's way too hard to sit through and it's a one note theme that they just milk for an hour and 56 minutes.

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