When he embarked on what was to be the final film of his career, Pasolini might very well have been attempting to send a message to his native Italians about their complicity with the Nazis during the course of World War II, but his adaptation of the Marquis de Sade's incendiary work of transgression suffers from the cinema's one unforgivable sin: it is deadly dull. Certainly many viewers will be turned off by the repeated depictions of rape, sodomy, coprophagia, sexual humiliation and torture, but these horrors are treated so casually by the director that the alienated audience is given zero incentive to care a whit about anything transpiring on the screen. With the exception of a very miniscule treatment of two young girls who support one another when one of the pair cries that she cannot go on, Pasolini exerts no effort to create sympathy for the enslaved children. What is undoubtedly meant as a commentary on the "banality of evil" comes out in the wash as just a banal film.
Review of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom
