Pasolini: The Death of the Gay Provocateur

PeterRS · 2025-11-11T06:06:12Z

50 years have just passed since the very gay Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film Salo, or as it is often referred to as The 100 Days of Sodom, was premiered. Based on the writing of the Marquis de Sade it is as usual with Pasolini highly erotic, yet also as described by The Guardian as a "terrifying masque about fascism and compliance, an accounting of both sides of the totalitarian coin. Like De Sade’s own writing, it’s about power, not pleasure: who possesses it and whom it destroys. It’s an apocalyptic masterpiece that remains unbearable to watch." It was so shocking it was banned in the UK for 25 years.

The Marquis de Sade had written the book while imprisoned in the Bastille. But he was only there for 37 days before he was transferred to an asylum. As described in an article in the New Humanist magazine, the story line is gresome -

The film’s plot is straightforward. Four “Fascist” libertines – the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate and the President – kidnap nine young men and nine young women, and take them to a villa near the town of Salò. (The choice of “Salò” was no accident – the real Salò was the de facto capital of Mussolini’s Nazi-backed Italian Social Republic, and it was near here that Pasolini’s brother Guido had been killed in 1945.) Accompanied by four male guards, four soldiers and four middle-aged prostitutes who tell lewd stories to inflame the men, they carry out a series of tortures and humiliations on their young victims, eventually torturing them to death.

Pasolini was a brilliant intellectual, one of the most prolific creators of all time and yet an artist who always courted controversy. In effect, and despite the shocked reaction of audiences, the movie is essentially an amalgam of Pasolini's own very left-wing views. In it he attacks authoritarianism, globalism and consumerism, basically telling us how disgusting modern society had become in his eyes. To a certain extent he was a visionary for much of what he considered life had become has indeed come to pass in 2025. Even so, some of his work came to be much praised. Frequently criticised violently by the Vatican, in 2014 it partly changed its mind and called Pasolini's movie The Gospel According To St. Matthew "the best film ever made about Jesus Christ."

A month before Salo's release, Pasolini was murdered in the most gruesome manner. Always gay, he had a predilection for teenage working class hustlers. On November 2 1975 he was found dead in the seaside town of Ostia outside Rome. The evening before he had picked up a 17-year old youth named Giuseppe Pelosi near Rome's main station. After eating dinner together, they drove to Ostia. After the body was discovered, Pelosi admitted that Pasolini had made a particularly painful homosexual advance on him. Pasolini tried to get him to change his mind, whereupon the boy battered his body very badly, especially around his testacles. He then ran over the body in Pasolini's silver Alfa Romeo before racing it back to Rome. Some, including members of Pasolini's own family, considered the boy was a patsy and that the murder had been committed by more influential figures in Italy, perhaps even the mafia. But that still remains conjecture since Pelosi had after some days confessed to the murder. In 1983 he was released on probation. Yet nearly 20 years after the murder, Pelosi retracted that confession. He died of lung cancer in 2017 aged 59. The real motive behind the murder and by whom it was comitted remains a mystery. Pasolini was just 53.

There is a lot of full frontal nudity in Salo. There is one scene where the teenagers about to be married all enter naked. I can only find a copy of the complete movie on a Russian website. This one below is dubbed into English. And for anyone wanting to see that particular scene, look at this you tube version at 41'15" in from the start. Just click on the small screen at the top. There is more nudity elsewhere where the guys seem particularly better endowed. But I just do not have time to locate them!

https://m.ok.ru/video/1644224711193

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