Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2019) As far as I’m aware, Salò is one of the rare films to straddle the line between pornography, gory horror, social statement and arthouse cinema. Among other distinctions, it has been banned from a few countries for decades, features copious full-frontal male nudity, updates a Marquis de Sade story for the Italian fascist regime of WW2 and is featured in the prestigious Criterion collection. Oh, and: the film’s most noteworthy scene involves a lengthy, unflinching and self-indulgent sequence of coprophagy—not once, but twice. The result is a film both repulsive and provocative, with writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini using perversions of all kinds (far exceeding even most perverts’ limits) to illustrate the depraved ideology of fascism pushed to its conclusion. Despite the nudity, sadomasochism and scatophilia, Salò somehow doesn’t quite come across as an exploitation film—nearly everything here is not meant to titillate as much as to make audiences deeply uncomfortable for the entire duration of the film. On the other hand, many viewers won’t make it to the end, and most people who see the film once will never make it to a second viewing. (This being said, and this is not a favourable comment on our times or my own jadedness, Salò is definitely disturbing but somehow not quite as graphically violent as many other horror movies.)  I’ve seen it only because it is of some historical importance (its Wikipedia page is a wild read), but got no enjoyment out of it—now that I’ve seen it, I’m quite happy to never revisit it.