sdyer@bbnccv.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (06/25/85)
I missed programs 3 through 7, but managed to take time to see the double
feature of "Loads" and Pasolini's "Salo: 120 days of Sodom." It is always
interesting to try to intuit programmer George Mansour's linkage in this
festival's double bills (though many festival-goers have finally decided
that there has been NO thought given to the pairing or the selection of
films.) Still, giving Mansour more credit, both films present us with
images of enslavement to sexual fantasies: in the case of "Loads", quite
funny and benign, and with "Salo", quite likely the most horrendous vision
ever set to film.
"Loads", a short 20-minute "home movie" by San Francisco filmmaker
Curt McDowell, came first. It is a quirky, likeable little film
about a filmmaker's obsession with straight, preferably seedy, men,
whom he unabashedly invites up to his loft to be captured forever on film
while parading around in the nude and allowing themselves to be
serviced sexually. The result is a kind of cinema verite verging
on the pornographic, but always keeping us off-balance with its
almost anthropological point-of-view towards the men who agree to
participate, and the feverish depiction of the filmmaker in the midst
of his fantasy.
"Salo", of course, is the kind of film your best friends warn you about
seeing. I forged ahead, thinking that if THEY could stand it, so could I.
It is Pasolini's last film, reportedly unfinished, since he was murdered
during its final scenes. Although he was originally said to be murdered
by a "boy", it seems that the Italian Mafia and other right-wing groups
may have had a role in planning, if not executing, his death.
"Salo" describes a group of Fascists during the final days of Mussolini's
Italy who capture or purchase a group of teenage boys and girls, and keep them
emprisoned in a local chateau as an outlet for their depravity (which
truly subscends any concept of sexual preference you could imagine: rape,
murder, torture, coprolalia, straight sex, homosex, you name it, "it's IN
there.") The film is broken up into four sections, an introduction, describing
the procurement of the teenagers, and three "Circles": Circle of Manias,
Circle of Shit, and Circle of Blood. Most of these are self-explanatory,
although "manias" may be taken as surrender to sexual excess of every kind.
The "circles" begin with parlor narrations by blowsy, middle-aged prostitutes
relating their older, active days, and progress to the activities which these
"stimulating" narrations produce.
Pasolini clearly meant this to be a kind of allegory wherein Fascism is
revealed for what it truly is. It is worth asking, however, whether
the film actually succeeds in communicating this, for it is truly one of
the most disgusting, unwatchable films ever made, accelerating past the
baroque to the bizarre with each passing minute. It is the art film
equivalent to a "snuff film"--that's how horrendous and powerful are the
scenes, and one where saying "it's only a movie" won't work. I found it
alienating and draining; I was more numbed than moved at its end.
--
/Steve Dyer
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