Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

Arguably one of the most infamous films ever made, Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom was the last work by the rebellious Pier Paolo Pasolini—an Italian filmmaker, poet, and intellectual negotiating his positions as a gay man, leftist, and Catholic. He transposes the Marquis de Sade’s seminal 1785 novel about the depravity and perversity of the French ruling class to Italy in 1944, one year before Mussolini’s death and the end of World War II. An allegorical critique of fascism and consumerism, the film depicts the sexual, mental, and emotional torture of a group of teenage boys and girls by the Italian fascist elite over the course of 120 brutal days. Celebrated and condemned, Pasolini’s final act was completed only weeks before his still-unsolved murder.