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| Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom - Criterion Collection | 
 enlarge | Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Actors: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, Marco Bellocchio
Studio: Criterion Collection
Category: DVD
List Price: $39.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  204 reviews
Sales Rank: 1288
Format: Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Ntsc, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Subtitled), Italian (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Number Of Items: 2
Running Time: 116
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.6 x 0.9
MPN: 1764
UPC: 715515031028
EAN: 0715515031028
ASIN: B0019X3ZZY
Theatrical Release Date: 1975
Release Date: August 26, 2008
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Product Description
Pier Paolo Pasolini s notorious final film, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic . . . it s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker s transposition of the Marquis de Sade s 18th-century opus of torture and degradation to 1944 Fascist Italy remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in.
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
The End of Salo, a 40-minute documentary about the film s final scene
Salo: Yesterday and Today, a 35-minute documentary featuring interviews with Pier Paolo Pasolini, actor-filmmaker Jean-Claude Biette, and Pasolini s friend Nineto Davoli
Fade to Black, a new short documentary about Salo, featuring interviews with filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, and John Maybury
New interviews with set designer Dante Ferretti and filmmaker/film scholar Jean-Pierre Gorin
Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
Theatrical trailer
Optional English subtitles
PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by Neil Bartlett, Roberto Chiesi, Naomi Greene, Gary Indiana, and Sam Rohdie, and excerpts from Gideon Bachman s on-set diary
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| Customer Reviews: Read 199 more reviews...
 the most dangerous film of all-time November 22, 2001
291 out of 345 found this review helpful
This film is not an exploitation film. Anyone that watches it based on that assumption is missing the whole idea of the movie. Pasolini made this film as an indictment of society, culture, and history. The film is about fascism, neo-fascism, and capitalism, and the images on the screen are not to be taken at face value, but as metaphors for contemporary society and politics. The sexual depravity shown on the screen, the coprophagy, the torture, it is all symbolic. For example, the children in the film are forced to eat excrement becuase Pasolini believed that contemporary culture and society was excrement, and thus was force feeding us, the consumer, with excrement.
The most interesting aspect of this film is that Pasolini, a homosexual, linked homosexuality with death and fascism. Why after portraying homosexuality in a beautiful way in his earlier works did Pasolini change his tune, nobody knows. Some think he lost his mind while making this movie.
Many don't like the film because Pasolini makes the victims out to be emotionless and doesn't allow us to pity them. But thats just what he wanted! By watching the movie, we are like the victims, allowing ourselves to be abused and also being a spectator to abuse. Again, everything in this film is done for a reason.
Before watching this film you should be familiar with de Sade, Dante's Inferno, and have some basic understanding of fascism and its history. If you lack any of these three elements, don't watch the movie because you will not get it at all. Again, don't watch this movie at face value. It is one of the sickest, most disturbing films ever made, and it is that way for a reason. Not for shock value or to get banned in country after country, but to make a statement. This film is so dangerous that it is believed by many that Pasolini was assassinated for making it. If everyone got this movie, the world would be in deep trouble.
 Not for everyone February 17, 2004
177 out of 205 found this review helpful
I've wanted to see this film for the longest time as it is known as "the most disgusting movie ever made." This of course intrigued me,but I also heard it was a very artistic film, incorporating many themes of human degradation and facism. Pier Pasolini directed this film and later was killed by a male prostitute (stabbed to death) and it was rumored he was killed FOR making this film.
Now, I'm not going to go on and on about artistic values and philosophical thoughts, because I really don't know that much about the subject at hand, I merely was curious about the film and watched a friend's copy. Now, lots of parts are difficult to watch (especially if there are parents around); like extremely degrading sex acts, human torture, and sodomy. The film centers around a group of 4 middle aged men who decide to capture a large group of random young teens (about 14-17 years old) and bring them all back to a mansion to a former prostitute who would tell them stories about her life, very sexually explicit stories, with the help of other older women they would keep these children captured basically as sex slaves- most of the time they were naked, fondled and just toyed with for the pleasure of these men. One scene which almost had me gagging was one where they all sat for a dinner, the main course was a huge silver tray of steaming human feces, they all were forced to eat (the "bad" guys loving every morsel of it). Other scenes where some of the children actally enjoyed some homosexual acts with these men made me cringe (not because I have anything against gays, but this film was just so perverse, yet strongly intriguing about it).
Well, there were a few girls in the group who wanted to rebel. Not much came of that except more punishment. The children really acted very cardboard cutout like, few of them making any real human emotion about what was going on. This in turn didn't earn your sympathies for them, giving you more leeway into watching the film, and didn't ever make you hate the men torturing these kids.
The end of the film was the most violent, it was seen through a telescope by a man in a window watching naked teens being brutality torchered (one kid had his tounge pulled out, another had a lighter scorching his genatils, etc). The very end of the film does have a more positive outlook after all the mayhem you witness, almost optimistic of people as a whole-extremely well done.
Anyway, in conclusion I would say that even though the subjects I mentioned about the film were so incredibly brutal and degrading, Pasolini doesn't seem to do it without a reason, this isn't some Troma film where it is made to shock. Pasolini is trying to make a statement about humanity, and even though I never figured out what it was exactly, it is evident throughout the film. Sure there were draggy parts within that could've been cut down, but as a whole this was probably one of the most revolting yet beautifully filmed movies I've ever seen. I won't soon forget it. If you've got a chance and have a very open mind, I highly recommend it, just don't watch it at face value. To truly appreciate this piece of art one must fully understand the history of facist ideas.
Devastating, horrifying, bleak, disturbing, even today...a film that has lost none of its power... May 26, 2008
82 out of 96 found this review helpful
Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The infamous film, Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom, has been reissued by Criterion in a special 2 disc edition. Criterion initally put out this DVD when they were still doing laserdiscs and DVD simaltaneously (its DVD spine number was 17), and the original DVD was pretty much barebones and not a particularly good transfer of the film (on either the laserdisc version or the DVD version). Now it's being released in a deluxe edition. What about the film itself? Is it worth picking up? Is it truly disturbing? Is it a work of art? Yes, yes, and yes.
Pasolini made this film in 1975 right after his "trilogy of life" films, which included The Decameron, The Cantebury Tales, and Arabian Nights (aka Thousand and One Nights). Those films were very joyful and playful, and did quite well at the box office. Pasolini went into a deep depression afterwards, feeling that all his films were bogus and compromised, and set out to make a film, as he called it, "undigestable". Salo was that film.
It is based on the Marquis de Sade's book, which was written in 1789 but not published until 1935. De Sade's book, while interesting at first, soon becomes boring and repetitive, outlining one sexual abberation after another. It's not erotic, in fact, it's quite disgusting, as most of the sexual behavior concentrates on coprophilia. Pasolini's film is much better than the novel, as Pasolini had much more to say with his film. He changed the original setting from 18th century France to the last days of Mussolini's government, which had set up shop in Salo, an actual province in Italy. Four fascists round up 8 teenage boys and 8 teenage girls, haul them off to a secluded villa, and degrade them and themselves for the duration. Pasolini here used the novel as a exploration of consumer culture, fascism, communism, perversion, torture (many of the scenes in this film have an eerie similarity to the Abu Ghrab prison photos taken a few years ago), and absolute power. Pasolini had said "he wanted to make a film without hope", and he did. Pasolini expounded upon de Sade's ideas and made a startling film, one that has immense power, even today. Pasolini was murdered shortly after completing this film in murky and still controversial circumstances, and somehow, that contributes to the bleakness and opppressiveness of the film.
The film is as cruel, nasty, controversial, and bleak as you've heard. It totally lives up to its reputation. It has graphic scene of sexuality (despite abundant nudity, the film isn't erotic at all, but cold and numb), torture (the final third is entitled the circle of blood), and coprophilia (the middle third is entitled the circle of s***). But it isn't an exploitation film at all. It was made with the best crew in Italy at the time. The film was shot by Tonino Delli Colli, who shot Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. It was produced by Alberto Grimaldi, who also produced Leone's spaghetti westerns and Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. Ennio Morricone scored it, Danilo Donati did the costumes, and Nino Bargali edited it. It was a legitamite production, and there was quite a lot of press surrounding it at the time of its release, as Pasolini was a huge name in Italy and international cinema at the time. Finding the film in its uncut form has been notoriously difficult over the years. It's been banned in many countries (it's still banned in Australia today), and even the DVD editions aren't complete. The original Criterion version and this version have omitted a scene where one of the fascists reads a poem from Gottfried Benn, which was included in the British Film Institute version. This 25 second scene has been posted on Criterion's website, and having seen it, it doesn't really add anything to the film. For all intended purposes, the version we have here is Pasolini's final cut.
I saw this recently in an extraordinarily sharp print in NYC, and the patrons in the theater didn't say a word. Some left. Most of them stayed, and were truly stunned afterwards. Some tried to laugh this film off at the beginning; by the end of the film, they weren't laughing. They couldn't. This film was made in 1975, and it still has the power to shake you to the core.
The DVD transfer is superb. It's as good as the print I saw at the IFC Theater. The extras are quite extraordinary, especially the documentary Salo: Yesterday and Today. It includes actual footage of Pasolini shooting the final scenes of the film (the torture scenes), and it's actually very difficult to watch this behind the scenes footage. Even though one may think it gives you a sense of relief that "it was all a movie", it doesn't. The footage (which is in grainy black and white, 16mm footage) has a power all its own. There is another documentary called Fade to Black in which Bernardo Bertolucci and Catherine Breillat talk about Salo. Bertolucci's thoughts on the film are particularly striking and poignant, as he was great friends with Pasolini as well as an artistic colloborator. The DVD box has one of the most chilling covers in Criterion history, including a sinister close up on the inside, which is astonishingly creepy. It also contains a 90 page booklet with fascinating essays by the great, brilliant filmmaker Catherine Breillat (who thinks Salo is a masterpiece) and Gary Indiana (who wrote a very well known book about the film). The only thing about this DVD edition that I object to is the fact that Criterion did not include John Powers's excellent essay on the film, which was printed on the laserdisc edition of the film. He said two things about this masterwork that are brilliantly insightful...
"It's the cruelest, most obscene, and most intellectually toxic work ever made by a major director. Once seen, it is forever remembered."
"At a time when movies are routinely called "shocking" and "contro-
versial", Salo not only lives up to these words but makes them feel childishly inadequate".
It is one of the most disturbing films ever made, on line with Cannibal Holocaust, Ichi the Killer, In a Glass Cage, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. It is worth watching and owning.
power corrupts: absolute power corrupts absolutely. October 24, 2000
63 out of 73 found this review helpful
Though still banned in my native England, tonight I finally got to see "Salo" after 25 years of hearing its fearful and mis-represented reputation. Reading through the reviews on the IMD and here on the Amazon site, it seems clear that for many it is a "Must See Nasty" - A film whose graphic imagery of torture, rape, coprophilia, sexual perversion and murder become an endurance test to rate alongside "I Spit On Your Grave" or "Last House On The Left". The truth is that on a purely visually graphic level, it's violence and rape is outdone by 1000 other films. But the emotional and mental impact of the film, it's messages and what it tells us of Man's inhumanity is practically unrivalled. It's hard to express the film's strength and message without lapsing into pseudo-psychobabble, and the layers of meaning and allegory contained within it are too various to list, but to try to put it simply, by using the extremity of deSade and the awful truth of Fascism in Europe, Pasolini confronts the beast in us all. Having lived in Italy during the time of Mussolini, Pasolini saw at first hand the distortion and debasemant of humanity under Fascism. DeSade in turn, celbrated the fact that man's capacity for atrocity was what made us human and could free us - two sides of one awful coin. Many of the scenes have an awful stillness, presented as full-frame tableaux, with the four main protagonists watching the degradations: Pasolini flips this back on us sat in a movie theatre watching the film... For anyone seeking to ask questions about whether or not Fascism, nazism or pure evil still has the capacity to re-occur, and particularly for those people who pretend "it could never happen here again", this is the film to confront them with. It is a multi layered, disturbing, often strangely beautiful film and one that any real fan of cinema should see, to fully experience the power of film to provoke, stimulate and force the viewer into confronting real, painful aspects of humanity. Sorry to get arty, but this film has had more impact on me than practically any film I have seen in the past 20 years. A masterpiece, for real. With recent events in Eastern Europe still fresh in the mind, this film and what it has to say about Human Beings is especially relevant.
 Only in Such A P.C. Society... July 9, 2002
61 out of 105 found this review helpful
...would human beings actually sit in their living rooms and watch this, claiming that it has merit simply because it falls under our catch-all notions of "art" and "freedom of speech."Here's a thought experiment...imagine you are watching this flick (with your bowl of popcorn, soda pop, feet up on the coffee table) and an Aborigine walks in. He has never heard political speeches about "free speech," never heard the endless spinning about "art" being a "mirror," never bought into the notion that our minds are "expanded" by subjecting ourselves to such images. All he knows is that you are sitting there, looking at a man forcing a boy to eat feces and sexually molesting him. I would argue that his reaction (completely free of political/intellectual bias) would be astonishment and disgust, and he would probably hope never to run into you again!!! He would wonder why it was portrayed and filmed, why you spent money to buy/rent it, and why you were actually watching it. He would not consider you "sophisticated"...he'd consider you sick. Healthy cultures have an "ethos," an unspoken communal sense of what is "okay" and what isn't. It has nothing to do with legality or law...nothing to do with censorship...it has everything to do psychology and human nature. Our culture is entirely DEVOID of an ethos...we base what we do and think on whether it's legal or not. Our attitudes have been so skewed and bogged down by ethical relativism that we refuse to be offended by ANYTHING, as we feed our own prurient fascinations and then legitimize it by calling it "art," or by referring to it as some sort of existential exercise in repulsion therapy. No doubt my views will be unpopular, but in a world of "Salo" apologists, why should that bother me?
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