The 120 Days of Sodom - Film Adaptations

Film Adaptations

In the final vignette of L'Âge d'Or (1930), the surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, the intertitle narration tells of an orgy of 120 days of depraved acts—a reference to The 120 Days of Sodom—and tells us that the survivors of the orgy are ready to emerge. From the door of a castle emerges the Duc de Blangis, who strongly resembles Christ, with his long robes and beard. When a young girl runs out of the castle, the Duc comforts the girl, but then escorts her back inside. A loud scream is then heard and he reemerges with blood on his robes and missing his beard.

In 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini turned the book into a movie, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma). The movie is transposed from 18th-century France to the last days of Mussolini's regime in the Republic of Salò.