DRO <DRO5621@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Salo: 1975 Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini
>         The film is just a waste of film stock and I wondered what kind
> a  "sick bastard" would make it. After some study, I was surprised to
find out that
> Pasolini was an acclaimed director, poet, novelist, and political
> speaker. But he did have a problem; he liked to pickup young male
> prostitutes, and this was his down fall. Not long after the film was
> finished he was murdered by a young hustler, although some claim it was
> a political assassination committed by several men.
>          I think he put on screen his fantasies with this film, and they
> were very twisted. I wonder what would have happened to his career if he
> had lived.

Pasolini was disgusted by the cruelty and shallowness of modern Italian
life; he blamed the church, urban capitalism and the end of traditional
rural culture.  Salo is an allegory of the abuse of power, intended as a
mirror held up before society`s leaders to show them their own predatory
nature.  I find it a little heavy-handed myself.  Teorema is a more
successful working out of the same ideas, and it also showcases Pasolini`s
own, decidedly anti-clerical, brand of Christian mysticism.

A better depiction of what Pasolini himself found erotic is his tender,
lyrical version of the Arabian Nights, shot on location in the near east
and featuring mostly non-professional actors direct from Pasolini`s casting
couch.  In other hands such a project would likely become an exercise in
shallow exoticism, but Pasolini, through his device of having each
character tell his own story within the larger story, emphasizes the
private inner worlds of his characters, making them all, both male and
female, the subjects as well as the objects of desire.  The movie has a
wonderfully casual, rambling, freewheeling quality, exploring the twists of
all its many interwoven tales with equal-opportunity curiousity and
delight.

And don`t worry guys--there are lots of naked girls getting busy as well!

Dylan
=dbd=

There's no need for peace marches and all that crap.  What is there
to worry about in the US of A today?  We use legislation to fix our
problems, and if we need to, we can call or email our congressmen. 
                                       --Duane Laviniere