In World War II Italy, four fascist libertines round up nine adolescent boys and girls and subject them to one hundred and twenty days of physical, mental and sexual torture.
An aging porn star agrees to participate in an "art film" in order to make a clean break from the business, only to discover that he has been drafted into making a pedophilia and necrophilia themed snuff film.
Director:
Srdjan Spasojevic
Stars:
Srdjan 'Zika' Todorovic,
Sergej Trifunovic,
Jelena Gavrilovic
Ancient Arabia. A youth is chosen by a beautiful slave girl to be her new master; she is kidnapped and they must search for each other. Stories are told within stories; love, travel and the whims of destiny.
A grieving couple retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage, but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
Director:
Lars von Trier
Stars:
Willem Dafoe,
Charlotte Gainsbourg,
Storm Acheche Sahlstrøm
Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass.
Director:
Gaspar Noé
Stars:
Monica Bellucci,
Vincent Cassel,
Albert Dupontel
The life of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Matthew. Pasolini shows Christ as a Marxist avant-la-lettre and therefore uses half of the text of Matthew.
Two violent young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.
Nazi-Fascist Northern Italy, 1943-44. Four senior members of government, aided by henchmen and Nazi soldiers, kidnap a group of young men and women. They hold them for 120 days, subjecting them to all manner of torture, perversion and degradation.Written by
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The story is divided in an "Antinferno" (Hell's vestibule) and three "Gironi" (Hell's circles). This structure is a reference to Dante Alighieri's "Inferno". See more »
Goofs
In the beginning of the film a 1948 Fiat 500 B can be seen. See more »
Essential Bibliography: Roland Barthes: 'Sade, Fourier, Loyola' (Editions du Seuil); Maurice Blanchot: "Lautréamont et Sade' (Editions de Minuit; in Italy Dedalo Libri); Simone de Beauvoir: 'Faut-il brûler Sade' (Editions Gaimard); Pierre Klossowski: 'Sade mon prochain, le philosophe scélérat' (Editions du Seuil; in Italy SugarCo Edizioni); Philippe Sollers: 'L'écriture et l'experience des limites' (Editions du Seuil) See more »
Alternate Versions
Salo has had a colorful history with Australian censorship boards. It was banned in Australia for 18 years before being re-submitted for a classification with the Office of Film and Literature (OFLC) in December 1992. It was then banned again by the full board of classifiers. The distributor at the time, Premium Films, appealed the decision to the Classification Review Board in early 1993. This Review Board lifted the ban and granted it an uncut cinema release with an R rating. It enjoyed a stint at arthouse cinemas in 1993, and again in 1996. The conservative Queensland Attorney-General, who caught wind of this re-release, applied for a review of the film in 1997 with the OFLC. They initially confirmed its R rating. The Attorney-General, unhappy with this decision, applied to the Classification Review Board for a complete review of its classification. This Board decided to ban it again. A DVD version was submitted in 2010 and passed by the Classification board as an R18+ on the basis of "176 minutes of additional material of behind-the-scenes footage which served to give the film context and reinforce its fictional nature", and this R18+ was confirmed by the Classification Review Board. See more »
Four fascists in WWII Italy abduct 16 youths and subject them to dehumanizing rape, humiliation and torture.
Many reviewers have commented that this movie is powerful and that everyone should see it because it gives you access to true feelings of disgust and guilt about man's inhumanity to man, especially during times of anarchistic, despotic, or fascist rule. If you need this movie to understand how terrible the crimes visited on people by the fascists, Nazi and otherwise, during WWII were, then Pasolini's only success is that he has demonstrated just how sick and desensitized our global society has become.
Stark brutality has its value as a tool for demonstrating the full force of certain horrible events. This tool was used effectively in other WWII films around the same subject, "Schindler's List" comes to mind. The problem with this film is that this tool has to be accompanied by real emotion and demonstration of the effect of that brutality. The only emotion (other than pure physical pain) demonstrated by the adolescents in this movie is during one scene where a young abductee cries at being reminded of the death of her mother. Aside from that, the victims walk through this movie like zombies as various disgusting acts are perpetrated upon them. There is no emotion, and frankly, the movie is an extremely boring series of repetitive acts of violence and humiliation that are reputedly designed to demonstrate the horror of unchecked power. The truth is, this is a dull expose on the acts of several bored, wealthy, powerful members of society who can no longer find stimulation in the banal trappings of every day life, just like the book it is based on.
The truth is, this movie has NOTHING to do with the horrors of fascism, it just happens that Pasolini chose a setting he knew well. There is no reason that this same exact movie could not be shot in a palace in the Middle East, a castle in Austria, a Villa in Latin America or a mansion in the USA and be just as realistic. It is nothing more than a dull comment on the depravity of the rich and bored.
Don't be drawn in by the mystery and the hushed tones that people use when they speak of this so-called "Masterpiece". And if you are a DVD owner, don't be fooled by the fact that Criterion wasted their time with this banal piece of Anti-Intellectual trash.
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Four fascists in WWII Italy abduct 16 youths and subject them to dehumanizing rape, humiliation and torture.
Many reviewers have commented that this movie is powerful and that everyone should see it because it gives you access to true feelings of disgust and guilt about man's inhumanity to man, especially during times of anarchistic, despotic, or fascist rule. If you need this movie to understand how terrible the crimes visited on people by the fascists, Nazi and otherwise, during WWII were, then Pasolini's only success is that he has demonstrated just how sick and desensitized our global society has become.
Stark brutality has its value as a tool for demonstrating the full force of certain horrible events. This tool was used effectively in other WWII films around the same subject, "Schindler's List" comes to mind. The problem with this film is that this tool has to be accompanied by real emotion and demonstration of the effect of that brutality. The only emotion (other than pure physical pain) demonstrated by the adolescents in this movie is during one scene where a young abductee cries at being reminded of the death of her mother. Aside from that, the victims walk through this movie like zombies as various disgusting acts are perpetrated upon them. There is no emotion, and frankly, the movie is an extremely boring series of repetitive acts of violence and humiliation that are reputedly designed to demonstrate the horror of unchecked power. The truth is, this is a dull expose on the acts of several bored, wealthy, powerful members of society who can no longer find stimulation in the banal trappings of every day life, just like the book it is based on.
The truth is, this movie has NOTHING to do with the horrors of fascism, it just happens that Pasolini chose a setting he knew well. There is no reason that this same exact movie could not be shot in a palace in the Middle East, a castle in Austria, a Villa in Latin America or a mansion in the USA and be just as realistic. It is nothing more than a dull comment on the depravity of the rich and bored.
Don't be drawn in by the mystery and the hushed tones that people use when they speak of this so-called "Masterpiece". And if you are a DVD owner, don't be fooled by the fact that Criterion wasted their time with this banal piece of Anti-Intellectual trash.