Pasolini and Caravaggio

Turning the camera on fascist sadism

In 1789 the Marquis de Sade, held in the Bastille, was transferred to the Hospice de Charenton to prevent him from inciting the crowd gathered at the foot of the prison walls. He was taken away, he says, ‘naked as the day he was born’. Indeed, he left behind him, hidden in his cell, an unfinished manuscript, begun in 1785, written on a scroll measuring twelve metres by eleven centimetres: The 120 Days of Sodom, or The School of Libertinage. Rediscovered and published in the early years of the twentieth century, the novel ‘overwhelms, suffocates and, like acute pain, provokes an emotion that breaks down – and kills’, in the words of French author Georges Bataille. ‘How did he dare? Above all, how could he? The man who wrote these aberrant pages knew well; he went as far as it is conceivable to go.’ It was probably this moral horror that caught the attention of Pier Paolo Pasolini when he decided to adapt the work for the big screen, setting the plot against the backdrop of World War II, and more specifically during the era of the Republic of Salò, during which numerous atrocities were committed.

Reputed to be almost ‘unwatchable’, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma centres on the depravity of four wealthy, corrupt fascist dignitaries known as the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate and the President during the Republic of Salò. After marrying each other’s daughters, they capture eighteen young men and women and subject them to four months of physical, sexual and psychological torture of rare violence. The victims are treated as objects, with virtually no right to speak, and their personalities are gradually destroyed by the barbarity of their torturers. Pasolini wanted to portray the anarchy of power and denounce the way in which Western culture was annihilating its own history. To describe the extreme crudeness of his film, the Italian film-maker put it in these terms: ‘Sadomasochism is an eternal characteristic of man. It existed during de Sade’s time, and it exists now. But that's not what matters most … The real meaning of the sex in my film is as a metaphor for the relationship between power and its subjects.’

The many rape and torture scenes, or involving coprophagia and sadomasochism, led to the film being censored in several countries. Even today, there is a debate among film critics as to whether the film should be categorized as pornographic. Like many disturbing works, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma portrays the worst in humankind, and in doing so it exposes the dizzying moral abyss of political corruption, consumerism, authoritarianism and sexuality steeped in nihilistic violence. The division of the narrative into four segments inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy (Anteinferno, Circle of Manias, Circle of Shit and Circle of Blood) and the references to Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality and Ezra Pound’s The Cantos bear witness to Pasolini’s well-thought reflection on his country’s fascist past and, more broadly, on the hell of subjugation, with total mastery of his aesthetic language.

The shock of the present moment

The symbiosis between beauty and violence has almost always existed in art. During the baroque, it was often part of an (at times sensationalist) quest for naturalism and movement, where the capturing of a moment was transcended by a vivid and powerful emotion. A tumultuous figure prone to impulsive outbursts, Caravaggio perfectly illustrates this almost melodramatic penchant for the shock factor in painting. He rose from complete anonymity to fame after settling in Rome, where he produced his most famous works before committing a murder, forcing him into exile. During his ten-year stay in the Eternal City, he claimed his place in the highly demanding field of public commissions for Roman churches.

Characterized by dark backgrounds, his style emphasizes the contrasts between light and shadow. Over the years, his art became more complex and moved towards a more intense psychological expression. He developed a predilection for violent scenes, particularly decapitations (where he often used his own features to depict the severed heads). For this he drew on mythology and the Bible.

Caravaggio’s painting Giuditta e Oloferne was inspired by the eponymous Old Testament story in which Judith saves her people by seducing, then murdering, the Assyrian general Holofernes. Caravaggio depicts this triumph over tyranny by focusing on the climax of the decapitation. Young, beautiful and fragile, his Judith partially turns away from what the act she is committing, while the naked Holofernes –powerful yet drunk, with bloodless mouth, disjointed body and bulging eyes – is captured screaming by the painter, a scream that will last forever, as the blood gushes from his carotid artery. A sinister old servant with a smug expression is about to collect the head in a cloth bag. Everywhere, the intensity of the moment is magnified, almost exaggerated, in the characters’ postures, gestures and facial expressions, even right down to their clenched hands.

Whether watching Pasolini’s Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma or contemplating Caravaggio’s Giuditta e Oloferne, our gaze is confronted with the ambiguity of sublimated violence, at once naturalistic and unreal. These works unsettle us because they manage to question our pleasure and our humanity, where the best and the worst have always coexisted …