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

[Mark]

I think it was seeing this movie in my teenage years that made me okay with watching 2girls1cup.

[Cass]

I thought this was already out on Criterion? Anyway, I watched this in college because it was a friend's favorite movie. I affectionately called it "Sodomy Camp"

Okay, I watched the clip and it made me want to die and it's haunting my soul a little bit. I need to know, to assuage myself, what are they ACTUALLY eating? What serves as poop substitute?

[Vera]

Wow, I thought I was jaded, but that was pretty gross. Methinks I wouldn't like this movie much.

[Vera]

Oh, that said, Rich, I agree you should check out Makavejev. His stuff is completely deranged in exactly the way you might enjoy.

[Bobo]

Anyone else think that looks like Mischa Barton screaming in agony at the top of the post?

Nice discussion between you guys.
I'm on the fence as to whether this movie deserves such keen analysis, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

It's interesting to compare the impact fascism had on the film industry of the former Axis countries. Post-war Italian cinema was energized by both the Neorealists and later, Fellini's surrealist movement, while Germany's vibrant, pre-war Expressionist tradition all but dried up following the close of hostilities. Perhaps it's not a coincidence, then, that Germany now is associated with the infamous "Scheisse porn" genre.

That's to say nothing of Japan's emerging legacy as deviant purveyors of schoolgirl smut and the undisputed birthplace of torture porn.

[spazmo]

And yeah, I realize that Japan was technically under Imperialist rule, as opposed to fascist, but hey, my point still stands. I mean...hello? Tentacle Porn?

[MDP]

Maybe it's just me, but I automatically dismiss movies that try to shock AND have a message to them. Sigh. Give me either one separately and I can respect it but both together and it's the most pretentious kind of movie that I can't help buy roll my eyes.

Those directors that seek to make the 'so deep and consisting of timeless importance' movies already fail because they can't be the voice of the people watching it (that is, after all, what the audience will decide for themselves) and have the vision of the person making it.

[dodger]

ok so i just watched it going in with knowing nothing but that it's shocking and controversial (read your post after). i couldn't get behind it, to me shocking and conteroversial was all it was, and it was cheap and badly filmed and edited, one note and unbelievable. i mean when your staring at a room full of naked boys and girls giving handjobs to there captors as an old prostitute recounts her youthful memories of pissing in the mouths of her much older clients, who cares if someone has to eat sh!t at the end of the story, i'm already numb from all that came before that the scene loses effect, this movie lost it's point by being so excessive to the point we can't even get a glimmer of light to strike contrast. It's just one poor taste scene after the next to the point i'm just as complacent as the victims. It would be shocking if it weren't trying so hard to be just that and in doing so passes up a really good chance to explore what would drive people to do this, especially the soldiers who are the same age as the victims yet remorseless, WHY? cheap. I mean in the shit scene, one shot is of the duke hiding behind the long table pinching it out, the next shot is his ass with the shit on the floor, wanna shock me, take a shit for real, i can tell this is acting and that ruined the film for me, Passolini is alot like Marie Antionette, he let em eat cake. and i have to disagree, alot of the scenes went on too long and were drawn out too much and made it dull, i mean seriously, shit or get off the chest. I see why this film makes most shocking top 10 list left right center but i can't help but feel it's a little bit of a knee jerk reaction to the scenarios, the nudity, the lengthy controversy that comes with the film. too me it was cheap and one-note and not that shocking (the storytellers tales and soldiers were somewhat disturbing, but underdeveloped), then again i'm very desensitized, i also don't have the benefit of the criterion which i'm sure is very eye opening. thanks for reminding me to check it out tho, i enjoy'd the challenge and glad it was able to get a passionate response from me, even if it was negative one. thanks again

[dodger]

ewww sorry! my post is like a saga :(

[dodger]

and i take some of that back, this films reputation preceeds it making it hard to view it without expectation and appreciate the film for what it is, which is probably more that simple shock value. I just didn't catch it on the first viewing, what were your initial reactions Rich?

[rolo]

The Devils! Oh yes. One of the greatest films ever made, no question. I believe wholeheartedly that there is Christian conspiracy to keep it from being released on DVD. When Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers gets a two-disc special edition, while a true masterpiece has never been on DVD at all, what else could it be. Everyone please write Warner Brothers and complain. But I have my uncut european bootleg with the nun orgy intact, so I'm ok for now. It's a lot more entertaining to me than Salo, plus it's got that bitchin' Derek Jarman set design.

[Faith]

i think i will get the book. and maybe the movie after that.

sounds interesting, despite the poop.

[AnnaTechnician]

Holy crap!

I mean...Rich, you have the stomach of a goat. Or something. What I want to say is that, I could barely sit through that video without gagging. Can't imagine how the entire film would affect me.

[Spin Sycle]

Rich......love, love LOVE this! While I've never seen this film, watching your vid with your friend was a riot! The little bits you had in it on one hand made me want to vom just a little but I couldn't help giggling at it! What does that mean?

[Spin Sycle]

Also, why did this segment make me think of GG Allin?

[unkyherb]

Quote from The Chicago Reader:

"Roland Barthes noted that in spite of all its objectionable elements,... this film should be defended because it 'refuses to allow us to redeem ourselves.' It's certainly the film in which Pasolini's protest against the modern world finds its most extreme and anguished expression. Very hard to take, but in its own way an essential work."

I always thought of this film as a wierd fusion of Hitchcock and John Waters. A film which accounts for the audience's necessity to the cinematic apparatus, by constructing representative images and ideas unimaginably and violently repulsive; the seriousness of Hitchcock's point of view meeting cute with Waters' uninhibited cultural perspective. The mere projection of these images gauges the audience's moral capacity by their ability to continue watching a movie that repulses them. By watching we accept the fascist perspective that Pasolini's mise-en-scene foists on an audience as a condition of it's construction.

And I find it funny that you, Rich, imposed a Pasolini film on another to watch their reactions, as many including myself have done with Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble. The expressions of utter horror and revulsion on unsuspecting spectators are like early Christmas presents, aren't they?

[kaitlin]

oh man. i remember this movie. shocking and disturbing but also kind of interesting.

i'm way way too violence squeamish. i dealt with the sex and even the poop eating better than the violence. ack.

but yeah, interesting. i was not expecting a post about this movie when i visited your blog today. lol.

[Jane]

This is one of those movies that I've been avoiding. Basically because I barf easily.

That scene was pretty damn gag-inducing. But if I must go through that, I'm glad you two were with me. Thanks, it was just the virtual hand-holding I needed.

And having gotten through that, I'm looking forward to watching the entire film and even seeing that scene in context.

On an empty stomach.

[NRW]

Hey Netflix whiners, how about you go to an actual video store and rent it? Unless you're too embarrassed to ask for the film with rape and shit-eating. We've got 2 copies!

[StickyKeys]

I absolutely love that Gabe responded like normal people and Rich's face had that look of sic, sick fascination.

I need to know the why's of this movie so I'll check out the wiki, but man. What's wrong with you!?! :DDD

[StickyKeys]

ps. The first Manga guy looks so much like Gerard Butler it's freaky! 300 will never be the same for me again.

[Kevin]

At some point in Helen Mirren's commentary on the recent re-release of "Caligula" (which I cannot recommend highly enough), she talks about the number of non-actors on that set too, and rather poignantly brings up how pooer many people in Italy were in the decades just after WWII.

Also, with "Caligula", you can pretty much bypass the question of whether it's art. Gore Vidal may have thought that was what they were making, but he wound up having his name taken off of it!

[Cameron]

Yeah, watch Sweet Movie. Real poop :(