Shit-eating and assorted other debaucheries made not repulsive, but dull.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was a failed poet and writer, and, like Jean Cocteau, decided to take his failure into another art form.
Salo, or 120 Days Of Sodom is a yawnfest from start to end.
Herein a trailer/clip:
Quoth me: 'Overall, Salò, or 120 Days Of Sodom is a very bad film; not the worst film I’ve ever watched, but surely amongst the dullest- think of an Andy Warhol Factory Film with some pointless perversions tossed in. There is little artistic merit, technically, no real narrative nor character development, no deeper ‘meaning,’ so why watch it? The only possible reason would be so that a young filmmaker could see exactly what NOT to do. I will watch some of Pasolini’s other films, but given my knowledge of this and his poetastry, I hold out little hope of getting by aesthetic socks knocked off.
Of course, one of the reasons the film’s ‘reputation’- such as it is, has endured, is because of the death of Pasolini shortly after the film’s premiere. Depending on your mood, it was either ironic or fitting that Pasolini was murdered by a young man who was repulsed by the lech’s overt homosexual advances and propositioning for money. There are several versions of the tale, online, but the most consistent details seem to be that the underaged youth, then recently released from jail, beat the crap out of the filmmaker, left him in the road, and then took Pasolini’s keys to his car and repeatedly ran over the man with his own Alfa Romeo until he was dead. Naturally, and given the acrimony following the release of Salo, Pasolini defenders took to claiming that the Left Wing ‘artist’- a convicted child molester, himself, could not have been killed by the kid, but was the target of- you got it, a government conspiracy to ‘silence him.’ Now, given the utter lack of intellectual depth that his last film, and his body of poetry, as well as a sampling of his ‘critical writings’ that I have read translations of, this would be akin to the proverbial ‘using a sledgehammer to kill a flea.’ But, it has kept Pasolini and this swill on the fringes of cinematic consciousness. In fact, in 2006, Time Out magazine rated Salò the most controversial film ever made, or, did exactly what PPP wanted: if one is incapable of art, go for what keeps the name.'
Correct again!
