SALO OR 120 DAYS OF SODOM ***

One look at the credits of Pasolini's most notorious and final film "Salo or 120 Days of Sodom" will tell you that this is not a piece of cheap exploitation but is intended to be a serious work of art, which, of course, doesn't make it any more bearable. This is a film which was intended to shock and to outrage and almost 40 years after it first appeared (and was promptly banned in many countries) it still does. Based on the writings of the Marquis De Sade, and updated to Fascist Italy, it demonstrates the kind of monstrous acts 'ordinary' people are capable of, (and the casting of the most 'ordinary' looking people imaginable is exemplary). It is, then, truly appalling but should it have been banned? I would argue not; this film is as important as Resnais' "Night and Fog" as a testimony to the horrors of fascism and terrifying banality of real evil and while it is fiction it seems to me no further removed from fact as that great documentary. It is also proof that Pasolini was one of the greatest of all film-makers even if this is hardly a film you will want to sit through a second time.