Arquivo

In transposing the lessons derived from “120 Days of Sodom” by the Marquis of Sade, to the latter days of the fascist dictatorship in Italy, Pasolini made what is regarded as his most violent, inhuman, and repulsive film. In a village in the north of Italy, four men (representative of the four powers: the nobility, the church, the judiciary, and the economic powers) gather together with four ancient prostitutes to subject girls and boys in the bud of youth to every type of violence. In the closed confines of a mansion, and for 120 days successively, the four men are to engage in indiscriminate use of the body and the lives of those youngsters. Divided into four groups (victims, soldiers, collaborators, and servants) they are to subject themselves to every type of abuse and torture. No sex that is associated to pleasure is to be permitted. Blood, foeces, and sperm are the elements most prevalent in day-to-day existence for those youngsters. To them, death will be as welcome as a day of sunshine. Pasolini was not at the opening night of the film at the Paris Festival on November 22, 1975. He was brutally murdered twenty days before, on November 2, in an ambush on the beach at Ostia, near Rome.