Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
1975 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Italian: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma), billed on-screen as Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom on English-language prints and commonly referred to as simply Salò (Italian: [saˈlɔ]), is a 1975 Italian-French political war art horror film directed and co-written by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The film is a loose adaptation of the 1785 novel (first published in 1904) The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade, updating the story's setting to Italy during World War II. It was Pasolini's final film, released three weeks after his murder.
The film focuses on four wealthy, corrupt Italian libertines in the fascist Italian Social Republic (1943–1945). The libertines kidnap 18 teenagers and subject them to four months of extreme violence, sadism, genital torture and psychological torture. The film explores themes of political corruption, consumerism, authoritarianism, nihilism, morality, capitalism, totalitarianism, sadism, sexuality, and Italian fascism. The story is in four segments, inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy: the Anteinferno, the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit, and the Circle of Blood. The film also contains frequent references to and several discussions of Friedrich Nietzsche's 1887 book On the Genealogy of Morality, Ezra Pound's poem The Cantos, and Marcel Proust's novel sequence In Search of Lost Time.
Premiering at the Paris Film Festival on 23 November 1975, the film had a brief theatrical run in Italy before being banned in January 1976, and was released in the United States the following year on 3 October 1977. Because it depicts youths subjected to graphic violence, torture, sexual abuse, and murder, the film was controversial upon its release and has remained banned in many countries.
The confluence of thematic content in the film—ranging from the political and socio-historical, to psychological and sexual—has led to much critical discussion.
The public source identifies “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” as 1975 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Salò, Days and Sodom.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q657977. VIAF identifies the subject as 204615198. The Library of Congress control number is no2001020780. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1785, 1904 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.