"At the time of his death he was completing the latter film, perhaps
the most eloquent and disturbing attack on fascism in the history of
cinema. The plot dealt with the sexual components of power and its
maintenance taken to murderous extreme. Using the literary framework of
one of the Marquis de Sade’s libertine novels, he was showing how even
sophisticated cultures ranking high in the production of the arts –
music, literature, architecture, all referred to in the film – can
succumb to the unscrupulous manipulation of power hungry thugs who, by
imposing their will on supine populations, can abuse and destroy whole
generations.With unprecedented directness, Pasolini was warning audiences that while nazifascist threats can be easily detected when dressed up in the conventional garbs of brutal domination, enabling a counter reaction, it is far more dangerous when the process of subjugation is carried out in ritualistic forms of apparent ordinariness by seemingly innocuous people, until they turn into monsters, by which time it’s too late and everyone feels complicit and compromised with the fait accompli. This is why the message of Salò was and remains so shocking."
