It is a movie that makes people physically ill. Even now, decades after its release, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom remains a name that clears rooms or starts heated debates among cinephiles. It’s not just "disturbing." It is a systematic, unrelenting assault on the viewer's psyche. Pier Paolo Pasolini, the director, didn't want you to enjoy it. He didn't even want you to find it "interesting" in a casual way. He wanted to hold your head underwater until you understood the true nature of power.
Most people who talk about this film haven't actually watched it. They’ve seen the clips. They’ve read the Wikipedia summary of the "Circle of Shit." But the movie is so much more than its graphic reputation. It is a dense, intellectual, and deeply pessimistic political statement.
Pasolini was murdered shortly before the film was released. That single fact adds a layer of grim reality to the project that no other horror or "extreme" film can match. Was it a political assassination? A random act of violence? The mystery of his death is forever tethered to the darkness of this movie.
The nightmare of the Salò Republic
To understand the film, you have to understand the history. We aren't just talking about a random house of horrors. The setting is the Republic of Salò, a puppet state in Northern Italy during the tail end of World War II. Mussolini was propped up by the Nazis, and the atmosphere was one of desperate, crumbling fascism.
Everything was ending. The leaders knew they were going to lose. And in that "end of the world" scenario, Pasolini suggests that power reveals its ugliest face.
He took the skeletal structure of the Marquis de Sade’s 18th-century novel and transposed it to 1944. It was a brilliant, if terrifying, move. By moving the story from France to Fascist Italy, Pasolini turned a book about individual deviance into a movie about state-sponsored cruelty. It’s about how bodies become commodities.
Structure of the descent
The film is divided into four "circles," modeled after Dante’s Inferno. You have the Ante-Inferno, the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit, and the Circle of Blood.
It starts "mildly." If you can call kidnapping eighteen teenagers mild. The four libertines—The Duke, The Bishop, The Magistrate, and The President—represent the pillars of society. Church, Law, Government, and Aristocracy. They are the ones who are supposed to protect us. Instead, they use their status to codify atrocity.
The dialogue is surprisingly high-brow. They discuss philosophy. They quote Nietzsche and Baudelaire. They listen to piano music. This is the part that really messes with your head; the juxtaposition of "high culture" with the most base, animalistic degradations imaginable. It suggests that being educated or "civilized" doesn't stop humans from being monsters. In fact, it might just make them more efficient at it.
💡 You might also like: Songs by Tyler Childers: What Most People Get Wrong
Why Pasolini chose the "unwatchable"
Why do this? Why film things that make an audience want to bolt for the exit?
Pasolini was a Marxist, a poet, and a provocateur. He saw the world changing in the 1970s. He felt that "modern consumerism" was actually a new, more subtle form of fascism. He argued that under capitalism, our bodies are no longer our own—they are things to be used, sold, and manipulated by corporations.
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is an allegory for that loss of autonomy. When you see the victims forced to eat filth, Pasolini isn't just trying to gross you out. He’s making a literal image of what he thought the "culture industry" does to the human soul. It forces us to consume garbage and call it food.
It’s a bleak view. Honestly, it’s one of the bleakest views ever put on celluloid.
The actors and the trauma of the set
You’d think the set would have been a place of misery. Surprisingly, many of the young actors recalled Pasolini being incredibly kind and protective. He knew the material was traumatizing. He went out of his way to make sure the "victims" felt safe during the production.
The contrast between the director’s gentleness and the film’s brutality is one of those weird cinematic paradoxes. He was a man who loved humanity but hated what humanity was becoming.
The casting was deliberate. He used non-professional actors for the victims to give them an air of genuine innocence. Their faces aren't "Hollywood" faces. They look like kids you’d see on any street in Italy. This makes the eventual violence feel less like a movie and more like a documentary of a crime.
Censorship and the legacy of the "banned"
Predictably, the film was banned almost everywhere. In the UK, it wasn't available in its uncut form for decades. In Australia, it was banned, unbanned, and then banned again.
📖 Related: Questions From Black Card Revoked: The Culture Test That Might Just Get You Roasted
But censorship usually has the opposite effect. It turned the movie into a "holy grail" for underground film collectors. People traded grainy VHS tapes like they were contraband.
When it finally became more accessible through the Criterion Collection, the conversation shifted. Critics began to look past the shock value. They started seeing the formal beauty of the shots. The cinematography is incredibly precise. Everything is symmetrical. Everything is cold. It’s filmed with a "distanced" eye, which makes it feel even more clinical and terrifying. There are no handheld cameras or shaky movements. It’s just the steady, unblinking stare of the lens.
What people get wrong about the "Circles"
There’s a common misconception that the movie is "erotic." It isn't. Not even a little.
Most "extreme" cinema—think A Serbian Film or even Hostel—relies on a certain kind of visceral thrill. There is a "kick" to the horror. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom has zero thrill. It is profoundly anti-erotic. The sex is depicted as a chore, a punishment, or a bureaucratic exercise.
It’s boring in parts. On purpose.
The libertines spend a lot of time just sitting around listening to stories. This mirrors the structure of De Sade’s book, where "historians" recount their past exploits to get the men in the mood for new crimes. The boredom is part of the point. Evil, in Pasolini’s world, isn't just flashy and dramatic. It’s also tedious and repetitive.
The final scene: A voyeuristic nightmare
The ending is perhaps the most famous part of the film, and for good reason. One of the libertines watches the final executions through a pair of binoculars.
He’s sitting in a room, looking out a window at a courtyard where the teenagers are being tortured and killed. Then, he switches places with another libertine so he can go down and participate, while the other man watches.
👉 See also: The Reality of Sex Movies From Africa: Censorship, Nollywood, and the Digital Underground
This is Pasolini’s final middle finger to the audience. He’s saying that by watching the movie, we are the ones with the binoculars. We are the voyeurs. We are participating in the cycle of power and degradation just by being "entertained" by it. It’s an incredibly meta moment that forces you to question your own morality for even finishing the film.
Is it actually a "good" movie?
This is a trick question. If a "good" movie is something you enjoy and want to see again, then no, it’s a terrible movie. Almost nobody wants to watch it twice.
But if a "good" movie is a work of art that perfectly achieves its creator’s vision and forces the viewer to confront uncomfortable truths about the world, then it is a masterpiece.
It sits in a category of one.
There are plenty of "shocksploitation" films that try to outdo Pasolini in terms of gore or sexual violence. None of them succeed because they lack the intellectual weight. They are just trying to be gross. Pasolini was trying to be right.
Actionable insights for the brave viewer
If you are actually going to watch this film—and that is a big "if"—there are a few things you should do to prepare.
- Read the historical context first. Don't go in blind. Understand the fall of the Republic of Salò and Pasolini’s own political struggles. It makes the "why" much clearer.
- Watch it as a political allegory, not a horror film. If you look for "scares," you’ll be disappointed. If you look for a critique of power and consumerism, you’ll be fascinated.
- Check the version. Make sure you are watching the restored version (like the Criterion release). The visual clarity is essential to understanding the formal structure Pasolini intended.
- Give yourself space. Don't plan on doing much after watching it. You’ll need time to process the weight of it.
Ultimately, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom isn't a movie you "like." It’s a movie you survive. It remains a towering, ugly, essential monument in the history of cinema—a warning about what happens when human beings are stripped of their humanity and turned into tools for the powerful. It is the definitive "feel-bad" movie of all time, and it wears that crown with a grim, unwavering pride.
To engage with it is to engage with the darkest corners of the 20th century. It’s not for everyone. Maybe it shouldn't be for anyone. But as long as power is abused, it will remain relevant.
To further understand Pasolini's work, compare this film to his earlier "Trilogy of Life" (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights). Those films are joyous, sexual, and celebratory. Seeing how he went from those vibrant celebrations of the body to the absolute nihilism of this final film provides the most profound insight into his changing psyche and his despair over the state of the world.