Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

One of cinema’s most notorious and feared films, Pasolini’s political war art horror focuses on four corrupt Italian libertines in WWII Fascist Italy who subject 18 teenagers to months of extreme violence and sadism.

The story’s four segments, inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, detail the sequestration of a group of teenagers into a rural villa by a clique of fascist bureaucrats, where they are subjected to a catalogue of ordeals, each more dehumanising and terrible than the last. A chilling, prophetic warning about the trajectory of modern consumerist power, the commodification of human bodies, and unchecked authoritarianism.

Pasolini's final film, which was released three weeks after his murder, was reviled, outlawed, sued, dismissed by many – to this day – as unnecessary torment for its viewers. Yes, it is atrocious, but also sublime. Essential to have seen it, but impossible to watch, as film critic Richard Brody put it.

The film’s enduring visceral charge owes a lot to its prescient qualities: Pasolini understood the dynamics of fascism infiltrating capitalism, and its reliance on compliance in its motion to corrupt all things.

If you dare, and then wonder why you did, an interesting complement to the experience is the Mark Kermode written 2001 short documentary Salò – Fade to Black.

Content warning: psychological and physical violence

This screening is supported by Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Dublino.