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Originally posted by Combat Ingrid
To me it seemed to mostly deal with poop and related stuff
To me it seemed to mostly deal with poop and related stuff
Pasolini on Salò
Its [the new consumer society’s] permissiveness is false. It is the mask of the worst repression ever exercised by Power on the masses of citizens. In fact (it is a remark of one of my protagonists of my next film, which is taken from de Sade and set in the Republic of Salò):
"In a society where all is forbidden, one can do everything; in a society where only some things are permitted, one can do only those things."
One can say that repressive societies … were in need of soldiers and, in addition, of saints and artists, while the permissive society needs only consumers …
The brood hens, the Italians have accepted the new unnamed sacredness of merchandise and its consumption … The new Italians do not know what to do with sacredness; they are all, pragmatically, if not consciously, very modern. And as far as sentiment is concerned, they tend to free themselves of it rapidly.
Schwartz, Pasolini Requiem p.632 (originally from B. Allen Pier Paolo Pasolini "Heart" 122-126)
"Sade said, in a phrase not so famous as others, that nothing is as profoundly anarchic as power … so far as I know, there has never been in Europe a power as anarchic as that of the Republic of Salò."
Schwartz, p.644
"They are taken by chance, they are more than innocent. They think at first that it is all a game and only realize what is happening when it is too late … but I don’t want them to be politically superior or inferior [to their captors]. In fact, I believe them to be superior, but insofar as they are the victims in this film. I could not make them too tender, so good as too tear at the heart.
If I made them likable victims who cried and tore at he heart then everyone would leave the movie house after five minutes. Besides, I don’t do that because I don’t believe it.
Comments made at press conference during filming (from De Giusti, Pier Paolo Pasolini; as quoted in Schwartz, p.655)
"I must confess that even here I do not arrive at the heart of violence … the real violence is that of television … For me, the maximum of violence is a television announcer. In my films, violence is a mechanism, never a real fact." Schwartz, p.659
Q: Do you think it was a period of great decadence? P: It was the decadence of the Hitlerian period, but not certainly of great Western capitalism.
What happened in the historical Republic of Salo:
Correspondence between officials from Mussolini's puppet Republic of Salo and the police suggests a pact under which the fascists would transfer Jews to the Germans and death in the camps, Mr Sarfatti says.
The Republic of Salo routinely arrested Jews and sent them to Fossoli, a camp near Modena, where the SS took control and deported them to Germany, he writes.
Since Mussolini had been aware for some time of the fate that awaited the Jews, Mr Sarfatti concludes that Il Duce progressed from withdrawing their civil rights to permitting their physical destruction.
Mussolini "took part voluntarily and knowingly in the Shoah", he claims.
A rival historian, Giovanni Sabbatucci, blames "a general complicity by the Fascists of Salo in the deportation and extermination of the Jews".
What happened to Pasolini in the war:
"For him, making the film, and setting it in Salo, struck deep personal chords, since his brother had been killed there during the war, and he himself had been captured by the Nazis nearby. Those "terrible days" inform the production design, from the villa, designed to look like the home of a "cultured Jew", to the haut bourgeois clothing, to the Art Deco and Bauhaus decorations, expressive of the era of functionalism and industrialism, to the De Chirico empty courtyards and streets. "
'Braveheart', whilst not featuring any poop, was a great stinking pile of merde, not even having the anachronistic virtues of Shakespeare's histories and tragedies.
The characters of Edward I and II were caricatures, and the portrayals of Edward II and Gaveston were ludicrous even by Gibson's shoddy standards. He plays fast and loose with chronology, geography, and most absurdly of all, with the parentage of Edward III.
Luckily I saw the film for free, because I would otherwise have attempted to claim damages for having had to sit through what felt like a tide of raw sewage.
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