SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
Genre
Drama, Horror
Language
VOSTA
Duration
116
Rating
About
BLEAK WEEK x QCCMTL | Cinéma du Parc
As part of Bleak Week, QCCMTL presents one of the most notorious and uncompromising works in cinema history: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
A poet, novelist, and openly gay intellectual working in a deeply conservative Italy, Pasolini occupies a singular place in queer cinema history, not only for depicting queer lives, but for confronting power, sexuality, and violence with a clarity that remains unsettling to this day.
His final film, released shortly after his murder, stands as both a culmination and a provocation: a work that refuses comfort, refuses catharsis, and dares the viewer to keep looking.
Transposing the Marquis de Sade’s text to the final days of fascist Italy, Salò depicts a closed world where the powerful enact their will on the bodies of the powerless, reducing human beings to objects of consumption, spectacle, and control. It is, in every sense, a film about systems, about how cruelty becomes ritual, how complicity takes root, and how desire itself can be weaponized.
Few films have been as debated, banned, or mythologized. But beyond its reputation, Salò endures because of what it exposes: the chilling proximity between authority and abuse, wealth and impunity, pleasure and domination. In a moment where stories continue to surface about the ways power shields itself, and the bodies it exploits, Pasolini’s vision feels less like a relic than a warning.
Warning : Shocking and difficult scenes. For mature audiences only.
Human cruelty is at its peak in SALO of master Pasolini. To see on the big screen...if you can!
Directed by
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Actors
Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto P. Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti, Caterina Boratto
Country
Italy, France
Version
Original w/English subtitles
Release year
1975
Original title
SALÒ OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM