So the British public is not going to be able to see Salo or The 120 Days of Sodom. Perhaps some mature reflections by one who saw the film as long ago as July 1976 at the quaint Pagoda cinema in Paris, might be of interest to the readers of New Blackfriars.

At the outset it appears that Pasolini is using a device we find in his film Pigsty where he tries to tell two related stories at the same time and keeps cutting from one to the other. There is first the story from de Sade of the four, rich, degenerate men who, looking for some new stimulus for their jaded appetites plan a monumental orgy. They seek out beautiful and innocent boys and girls, take them to a remote castle and there indulge in all manner of depravities for 120 days at the end of which they torture and kill their victims. Then there is the story of the short lived fascist republic that was established at Salo in North Italy in 1943-4 and the enforced recruitment of young peasant boys to serve the Nazis in the war against the allies and their own countrymen. But it soon becomes apparent that the fascism that Pasolini is interested in is not so much Salo as the ‘nonfascist’ fascism of present day Italy under the capitalist system. The historic Salo is soon forgotten and the four men are shown as pillars of Italian society : Il Duca, Monsignore, Excellenza and Presidente. It is these contemporary figures who become the protagonists of the de Sade story. The orgies take place in three stages or gironi. A word chosen perhaps to remind us of the Dantean circles in hell. Each of them is introduced by a female character who recites the scene that is enacted before us.