Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom

The final work of notorious Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, this film updates the Marquis de Sade's most extreme novel to fascist Italy in the final days of WW II. Dispensing with the novel's meditations on sexual liberation and the search for truth, Pasolini presents four decadents who kidnap ...more

Questions raised by films like Salo are often concerned with boundaries of decency. What is the line between poetic and pornographic? Striking and vulgar? Art and smut? Director Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom, whose title alone indicates the mildly traumatizing viewing experience one can expect, has been called both high art and exploitative filmmaking. It's difficult to argue either either stance with conviction; the film is as coarse as it is intellectual, and sometimes ...more