For those who like Italian films, and especially for collectors of bizarre cinema, the showing of "Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom" (Italy, 1975) on November 1 in Spaulding Auditorium at 6:45 and 9:15 p.m. is a must-see.
The film's director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, is a pivotal figure in Italian film. His work bridged all the major Italian cinematic movements; neo-realism, surrealism and epic.
Pasolini learned the screenwriter's art at the feet of Federico Fellini, with whom he worked on the script of "The Nights of Cabiria."
His first directorial efforts were films in the Italian neo-realist style championed by DiSica and Rosselini. But Pasolini rejected that style when he made his most famous film, "The Gospel According to Saint Matthew" in 1964.
Many critics hailed it as the best and most reverent film ever made on a biblical subject. He called it "a reaction against the conformity of Marxism." From this point on, his art was obsessed with non-conformity, usually by showing sex, especially homosexual sex, as a means of subverting the status quo.
"Salo" combines a story line Pasolini took from the Marquis de Sade's "120 days of Sodom" with a structure borrowed from Dante's "Inferno" -- concentric narrative circles descending into the depths of hell.
He locates and updates De Sade's pornographic epic to the city of Salo, the capital of Mussolini's fascist republic during the days before its downfall in 1945.
The movie begins with the "anti-inferno" (Nazis destroy a town and round up prisoners). It then moves through three Dante-esque "circles": the "Circle of Manias," concerned with the lust for power, the "Circle of Excrement," concerned with consumption and defecation, and finally the "Circle of Blood," concerned with sadistic destruction.
In "Salo," the Nazis embody the fascistic tendencies of a sexually liberated cosumerist society. It joins films like Kenneth Anger's "Scorpio Rising," Visconti's "The Damned," and Lilliana Cavani's "The Night Porter," in celeberating Nazi totemism and fetishism as erotica.
Film critic Susan Sontag said, "Much of the imagery of far-out sex has been placed under the sign of Nazism. More or less Nazi costumes with boots, leather, chains, iron crosses on gleaming torsos, swastikas, have become, along with meat-hooks and heavy motorcycles, the secret and most lucrative paraphernalia of eroticism ... Why has Nazi Germany, which was a sexually repressive society, become erotic? How could a regime which persecuted homosexuals become a gay turn-on?"
Following Pasolini's lead, even such boy-next-door filmmakers as Steven Spielberg have come to intertwine Nazism and sexuality.
The camp commandant in "Schindler's List," played by Ralph Fiennes, is a lecherous character who cavorts with a strumpet and shoots prisoners as though the two events were part of one pleasure.
"Salo" is clearly designed by Pasolini to be hard to swallow. The most shocking event in the film is a Nazi dinner party during which human excrement is consumed, symbolizing Pasolini's hatred for modern consumerism.
Watching "Salo" is an unforgettable experience. It is one of the most outre, explicit, and adult movies ever made. It's not for the squeamish, but if you have a strong stomach, come brave this once in a lifetime showing -- you're not likely to see it playing at your local Sony theatre anytime soon.
