Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

1975 / 116min / 35mm

Pasolini’s final film remains one of the most shocking ever made. Set during a waning fascist Italy’s dark days amidst World War II, Salò updates the writings of Marquis de Sade to create a repugnant tale of four wealthy libertines who kidnap a group of teenage boys and girls and enact horrific humiliations and violence upon them. A formally and conceptually brilliant, if relentlessly nauseating, portrayal of man’s most debased instincts and the capitalist systems that allow them to thrive. Per Pasolini, “The most sincere thing I could do at that moment was to make a film about a mode of sexuality whose joyousness is a compensation for repression—a phenomenon that was about to come to an end, forever.”