Gabe and Rich watch a movie: Salò

Last week, Criterion rereleased Pasolini's piss-and-shit-and-sex-and-violence 1975 spectacular Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, which, per Wikipedia (because I can't be bothered to think up a better nutshell sketch because I've been thinking about this fucking movie for like two weeks straight) "transposes the setting of the Marquis De Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom from 18th century France to the last days of Mussolini's regime in the Republic of Salò." The wisp of a plot involves a group of libertines rounding up a slightly larger group of teens and degrading the shit out of them. Literally! It is a film whose reputation precedes it (it routinely ends up on Top 10 Most Shocking Films of All Time lists), and one that made un-squeamish (squeamless?) me feel ill on initial viewing.

So, I figured, there was no better way to celebrate the rerelease than by replicating the sadistic spirit of the film by making the uninitiated endure it. I called on my friend Gabe Delahaye, one half of Videogum to watch it with me to gauge his reaction. While Gabe and I share many common pop-cultural interests, I find him to be slightly more conservative than I am, especially when it comes to on-screen violence. As Gabe says in his intro to this same piece (we're cross-posting, see?) on Videogum: "Rich...likes some fucked up movies, and sometimes he makes me watch one." Ha! Exactly.

What follows is a not-so-serious discussion about a pretty damn serious film. Oh, there's also a 2 Girls, 1 Cup YouTube reaction parody embedded below. I thought it was appropriate because of the poop eating. Low-brow meets high-brow, just how I like.

This is all kinds of NSFW, so beware. But you know you want to look. Seriously, how could you resist?

rich:  Instead of The 120 Days of Sodom, this movie should have been subtitled, Penis and Poop.
gabe:  Well, it kind of was subtitled penis and poop.
gabe: That was a joke about the subtitles.
gabe:  Pretty successful.
rich:  I got it, I got it. There's always a delay on subtitle humor. The command to "mangia" applies equally to both penis and poop.
gabe:  I don't know about you, but the "mangia" part was really difficult for me to hear with a straight face. Because I think that was the only Italian word I knew as a kid. The classic Italian incitement to eat.
rich:  I want a pasta sauce with the kid getting his eye gouged out on the label.
gabe: You should write Paul Newman.
gabe: QUICKLY.
rich:  I'm doing it. For the sake of a nation's appetite. That shit would fly off shelves.
gabe: I think that if this exact same movie were made today or by an American, but everything about it basically the same, I would have a different reaction.
rich: Why?
gabe: I give a big sweeping pass to people who lived through World War II. I feel like they can make their own rules on morality or decency or what's of value to talk and think about.
rich: That's interesting.
gabe: Pasolini was in his 20's during the war, which is the perfect age to be kind of broken by it, permanently.
rich: Totally.
gabe: I mean, I guess any age, really.
rich: That's a great point.
gabe: World War II was a real mess, you know?
rich: Was it? A bigger mess, than say, Rock of Love?
gabe: If I am to believe Steven Spielberg, yes.
rich: Please, let me be your Reich of Love.
rich: Do you regard this as an exploitation movie?
gabe: Not really. Do you?
rich: I guess in a way I do. I understand the free-pass philosophy. But people being made to act like dogs is...people being made to act like dogs. For all the unrealness and camp...there's realness, things actors were actually made to do...naked, a lot of the time.
gabe: Oh sure.
rich: On top of the fact that, per your of-its-time point, I don't think that child-pornography laws would ALLOW this to be made today.
gabe: Well, a couple things on that: 1. The free-pass philosophy doesn't address exploitation. It's more just a matter of me feeling like "OK, Pasolini. If you say so." Part of me wants to recoil, and part of me is just like, "Who am I to tell this guy what the world is like, or what is or isn't appropriate?"
gabe: Because I can talk to Pasolini.
gabe: Because he didn't get run over with his own car.
gabe: In a brutal murder. But as far as exploitation is concerned, I guess I just think of that as being something bigger than this movie is capable of. Like, what could the people who may or may not have been exploited possibly have hoped to gain from this? To the point that they could be manipulated against their better judgment to the detriment of themselves and possibly their community?
rich: I mean, why does anyone do movies in which they're asked to reenact atrocities or to have those atrocities reenacted upon them?
rich: Fucking famewhores.
gabe: I agree that they were treated badly and humiliated and that there's no real distinction between the recreation on the screen and the reality of what they're supposedly doing. But I don't know if in this instance they're actually being exploited. The whole movie is so confusing in that way. How it got made is a mystery to me.
rich: Yeah, totally. And a lot of people think that Pasolini's homosexuality is wrapped up in his imagery. That adds another layer of confusion or, as I like to call it, exploitation. His sexuality informs his process, for example, by employing good-looking boys and having his camera gaze slowly on their penises. Like the first shot of cock is verrrrry slowly sweeping. He wants you to feel the foreskin.
gabe: Yeah. I felt it. No homo.
gabe: I guess maybe in that way, the movie is exploitative.
rich: It's messy, but that makes it ripe for discussion.
gabe: Almost self-exploitative? I don't know, I might need to go back to college.
rich: If it were just a sterile depiction of this grossness against humanity, it'd be less provocative. But despite Pasolini's best efforts (i.e. his long, detached shots), there is humanity there.
gabe: Oh definitely. The movie is all the harder to watch for the fact that there are no recognizable actors in it. At least, not recognizable to me. And they don't even seem like very good actors.
rich: It's so telling that these people didn't go on to do anything else. It's one of THOSE movies. Like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls or Meet the Feebles.
gabe: Well, to be fair, Peter Jackson directed Meet the Feebles.
gabe: Where is our SALOTR?
gabe: Wasn't he a neo-realist or whatever?
rich: Hmmm, I think I need to go back to college for that one.
gabe: I believe that the Italian neo-realists regularly used non-actors to tear down the artifice of narrative films, which in a film like this makes things extra uncomfortable.
rich: Yes. These people might as well have been put through this shit for all it did for their careers.
gabe: They couldn't really have thought this was going to be a career thing. Not that I have any idea why someone would want to be in this movie
rich: Yeah, I mean, why then? Do you believe in art so much that you're willing to take part in being degraded (even fictitiously) with absolutely no payoff?
gabe: Right.
rich: And in 2008, all my reasoning comes back to is fame-whoring.
gabe: Right, but we can't really look at this through a reality TV show contestant lens.
rich: I know.
gabe: There was a time when people didn't even know how much they wanted that kind of attention. Or how badly.
rich: The concept of "non-actors" is probably more foreign than any other related to this movie, in my mind. And that's saying something, for a film that largely is considered to capture the un-capturable.
rich: So we just assume that these are all artists? Each shit smear was like a stroke of a painter's brush.
gabe: I don't feel smart enough to get into a "What is art?" argument, but what is art?
rich: Organized expression, however loosely manifested, I think.
gabe: Oh OK. Then yeah, I guess this is art.
rich: The art debate is very applicable to this movie. Because in so many ways, it's as lofty or "high" arty as film gets.
rich: And also, there is shit-eating.

gabe: Right
rich: That's what I love about it, that mix of high and so, so low.
gabe: I would be curious if there was that kind of distinction back when it was made. I mean, there was definitely mass-art cinema, and smaller cinema. But I feel like it wasn't until Miramax was founded that people really started to be assholes about it.
rich: I bet there were always snobs. And, of course, the fact that Salò is alienating adds to its art cred.
gabe: Well that is the thing that probably makes me the angriest in the art world. Or the art film world. The idea that if you don't like something it's either because you don't understand it or because you can't handle it. Not that I understand this particular movie or can handle it.
rich: But you do and you can.
gabe: It's such a cop-out argument
rich: I mean, that's kind of the beauty of this film. That it doesn't really do that. It turns people off, yes. But what it portrays so simple, for all its de Sade-inspired, highfalutin conceit. It doesn't talk above your head. It kind of just pummels you. I mean, the plot is threadbare. What you see is what you get. I think (mainly because I watched the extra features) that Pasolini's main theme was that power corrupts and renders those without it into interchangeable commodity.
gabe: Right. Very communist of him.
rich: Oh for sure.
gabe: I remember in my film classes, they were always trying to give "Marxist readings" of films. "They." This would have been perfect for them
rich: Speaking of classes, this whole experience of revisiting this film and immersing myself in learning about it has been altering. The more I read the essays in the 80-page (!) booklet ("booklet") and the more I watch the bonus features, the more I'm convinced of this film's greatness. Criterion is a network of propagandists. With their own agenda. That's why I'm going to wait for the 2-disc set of Beverly Hills Chihuahua before settling on an opinion.
gabe: Criterion is so weird. Armageddon?
rich: Yeah, that's a blip for sure.
gabe: I still am not sure who this movie was made for.
rich: Me neither, really. Maybe Pasolini wasn't thinking of anyone else but himself at this point. Maybe that's the final word on what makes it an art film: audience-aloofness. It's not so much, "If you don't like this, you don't get it"; it's more: "Who?"
gabe: I thought the speech on the front lawn where the President explains the rules about incest and rape and limb-severing punishments was what made it an art film. My art film alarm went off. ART FILM ART FILM.
rich: Haha. Did it go into the red when he mentioned sodomy?
gabe: Sodomy is no longer just for art films.
rich: Do you think this movie deserves its reputation for being one of the most shocking of all time?
gabe: Probably. It's always hard to see things in anything resembling the time in which it was made, but it's still very shocking now. I can only imagine how it must have felt in the 70's.
rich: The sex aspect is much more affecting than the violence. Although, obviously, the two are intertwined throughout.
gabe: The sex aspect is mostly violence
rich: Yeah, I guess there's the sex-violence and the violence-violence. But I do feel a little prude by being more shocked about the sex stuff.
rich: The real scene of carnage, the last 10 minutes of the movie, seems tame in comparison to the rest of what goes down. But there people are, being scalped and branded and burned and having their tongues cut out.
gabe: There's also the constant threat of violence. at a certain point very early on I really felt like the film might do anything. There were no rules whatsoever.
rich: Despite the libertines' pretensions.
rich: Salò: proto-torture porn?
gabe: Maybe, but I think you and I disagree on torture porn. I think Salò is like proto-Funny Games. Proto-torture porn for snobs.
rich: Well, we disagree on what's worth watching, certainly. It's just that the emphasis is on the torture, on the dragging out of violence rather than quick, sometimes innovative kills.
rich: Could someone get off to this movie? Yes. That's conceivable.
gabe: YES.
gabe: Hahaha.
gabe: TOTALLY
gabe: Yes. Someone could.
rich: I don't think of myself as "sick," per se, despite what others may think, but I did feel a little gross when I found that I was ideologically aligned with one of the libertines: "All's good if it's excessive." I totally agree 100 percent. And that's why this movie is for me.
gabe: So when this movie is for you, what does that mean?
rich: Oh, just that I appreciate it.
rich: And masturbate to it.
gabe: I think it's hard not to appreciate this movie. I mean, it would be easy not to. But it's hard not to if that makes sense. I'm always supportive of anyone trying to do something, even if it's kind of painful to watch. As long as I feel like they were really working
rich: It's kind of perfect, in its depraved way. It's not boring. Despite its depiction of excess, it's not overly long or stuffed with needlessness. It's paradoxically clean.
gabe: It's efficient
rich: It's like a car wash, except instead of soap, they use shit.
gabe: And rape and murder. Don't forget how they use rape and murder. On your car.

Comments

[Bapril]

Okay, I'm an idiot...or possibly just naive...but are the actors eating actual shit? Despite how disgusting THAT is, I was equally amazed by the guy who just dropped his pants and took a dump in a room full of people. Kudos to that guy.

[mutterhals]

I saw this in my teens, and for the longest time I thought it was a documentary! Your taste in movies is impeccable.

[Michael Morgan]

Salo is perhaps for me one of the most challenging films I've ever seen. I find it interesting that you really like it but then kind of parody it with the vid? Back then you couldn't control and manipulate film to your own liking or rewatch it over and over in snippits until it loses all its power. You could only sit in a theatre and experience it.
To me the homosexuality line dates the film. I wonder if Passolini envisioned how accepted it would become because based on this film I dont' think he did.
Also, the editing and camera placement are so dry and detached and brilliantly done that they place the audience on the side of the sadists implicating us. The rape, murder, etc, are not heighted or sensationalized [or eroticized?] with camera trickery. Also the victims are nameless and give stale often lifeless performances.
The passive audience spectators could be a telling metaphor for how the events of WW2 came to pass. In that fact, the film is slightly elitist. To know the history behind the film and director greatly heighten the effect of the film which would be lost to the casual or uninformed film goer.
I guess one of the themes of the movie is that nothing is sacred and in many ways its an EXTREMELY dark comedy, another brilliant aspect of the film, its not easily categorizable. So why shouldn't you be able to poke fun at it? TO me your vid comes across like the two stoned dudes who are sitting behind you in a theatre while you're trying to enjoy a serious film.

[Brad]

Supposedly their "feast" was concocted using chocolate and orange marmalade. At least that's the word on the street.

[Maria]

I've heard of the film, but never seen it. I've always wanted to, but never remembered to look for it.

And that was a chocolate covered banana, right? *lol*

[nix]

gabe: You should write Paul Newman.
gabe: QUICKLY.

I can't read any farther than that, it's making me laugh so hard. I'm...sure the rest is good too.

[dave]

eww sounds gross. where can i find it?

[Steven]

I have to agree with Brad, it does feel a bit like a concentration camp allegory. What amuses me though is that supposedly A Clockwork Orange is shocking but I couldn't have been less shocked by it. This movie, though, taps into some of our deepest rooted feelings of disgust. It'll probably always be shocking.

[Andrew]

My dad is a professor who specializes in Italian cinema—when I first heard about, I had to ask him what he thought of it. And he said he didn't find it at all shocking. Which I found shocking, because even though he has a stomach for horror films and such, he doesn't really enjoy them at all. "But don't they like... eat nails and shit? And shit?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "And it's a good movie." And he left it at that.

I think that it's interesting seeing how he views it in terms of his professional background, as an unquestionably "important" film made by a master, and how this basically eliminates all of the disgust for him.

I'll ask him about it again today.

[Anna]

I love the joy on Rich's face and the absolute horror on Gabe's

[Genevieve]

While I totally don't have any interest in watching the film, man to be a fly on the wall with you guys. I love both your writtings.

[Fer]

Damn, I always enjoy your reviews. I think this movie is brilliant. A shame he got murdered after this one. I fell in love with his point of view of life after watching his trilogy of life and this one had to be seen. He truly was way ahead any other at his time.

Also, thanks for the laugh. I really enjoy watching my friends reactions everytime I make them watch those fucked up movies I like :P

[Bobo]

Salo sucks not because of the raping and the shit-eating but despite the raping and the shit-eating. Pasolini was a fraud, hailed as a master because a) people don't realize that, shit-eating aside, his whole "decadent fascists as symbols of the depravities of the upper class" was a pretty common European arthouse convention at the time (Visconti anyone?) and b) because he had such a perfect last name for a cinematic master.

Pasolini. Paso-LINI. PASO-lini.

Lini.

[Jill]

Ok I had to comment because at the last place I lived this movie randomly showed up in the mail. It was for a past resident who had moved out awhile ago so we opened it up to see what it was and we ended up watching it. This was in 2007 so the funny thing is the movie was hard to find then and it just showed up at our house. We had no idea what it was. It was pretty messed up, but I watched it all!

[Miss Lisa]

The whole post reminds me of the GOP Convention. Can't say why.

I Just had a dream with shit in it last night. Not the eating of shit, but shit was present. I could SMELL it in my dream. Yuck. Must check a dream dictionary on that one.

I'm hoping Ken Russell's "The Devils" is released in its entirety on DVD some day. That's the disturbing film I've been wanting to see. But it kind of looks like a walk in the park compared to this...

[Pete]

Damn you, Netlix! "Very long wait" indeed!

[chasgoose]

You should try Serbian Dusan Makavajev's "Sweet Movie" (also on a Criterion Collection propagandized DVD set) next. Not only does this movie have one of the most ridiculous golden shower sequences ever, but it features a dinner/orgy sequence (one of many sequences that mixes food, sex, and bodily substances that should never be mixed with either) that essentially is an extended "Two Girls and One Cup" with more people and dudes. Not to mention its opening sequence which is a bizzaro "World's Prettiest Vagina" beauty pageant.

I think Sweet Movie is trying to say something about Marxism and the Soviet Union's betrayal of Marxist Ideals or something (certain sequences are intercut with footage of the mass graves of the victims of the Katyn Massacre) but the message was muddled by all the weird food sex.

Makavejev's "W.R. Mysteries of the Organism" which is a pseudo-documentary about Wilhelm Reich who was a crazy protege of Freud who moved to Maine and was convinced that he could make it rain by harnessing the power of orgasms or something (he was also the subject of Kate Bush's classic single/video, "Cloudbusting"). Anyways soon it becomes clear that once again its some muddled commentary on communism, but at least it's not gross and unwatchable. And you get to see how dildos are made.

[Mandy]

I first saw this movie as a young teen then did a viewing with friends years later. I've only found one other person who didn't vomit besides myself. Trust me, I thought about it though.

It cost a ton to buy back then though (I'm 32 so yeah, that's back in the illegal vhs days). God bless the internet for bringing out the wonder that is Salo to the masses and making them vomit in mass.

[Kira]

Somewhat disturbing, but I guess I'm jaded (or have seen way too much on the internet) because I've seen worse than that. And the poop did not look real in the least. I guess if you had to watch 2 hours of people eating (fake) poop it might wear on you, though.

[Chantal Goya]

Can't wait to see it. I fucking love Criterion.

[Whitney]

Mmmm...that poop sounds delicious.

Count me in with Bapril at being amazed at the guy who took a dump in a room full of people. I think I would be stricken with horrible performance anxiety if asked to poop on the floor in front of a crowd. ("OK, wait, I think it's coming...oh, sorry, false alarm, that was just gas...give me a minute...hey, where are you guys going? You're going to miss your feast!") Obviously I am not cut out to be a sadistic, torturing libertine.

[katia]

i bought this vcd in china (counterfeit version) just because i was buying ANYTHING in french and lots in english because they were so cheap. I ended up SOOO shocked and disturbed.

[W]

YOU DID NOT MAKE GIF. FROM A SCENE FROM SALO -- I GASPED lol

You should make one of the children on all 4s eating the cake filled with nails .........or candles burning genitals?

[Molly]

I'm pretty sure Criterion put out Armageddon and The Rock as a conditional thing after Michael Bay and/or Jerry Bruckheimer gabe them a shit-ton of money for film preservation. Maybe "shit-ton" is not the best unit of measurement here. Or actually, maybe it is.

[Derek]

I hate you both. I had this on the top of my netflix queue for weeks and its still a VERY LONG WAIT. Ugh, I feel I will never get this movie, and may just have to buy it.

As I've read 120 of Sodom this summer (ahh, beach literature) I am anxiously awaiting this feature to see how it compares.