FAQ

The actors were actually all adults who were over the age of 18.

Pasolini intended for the film to be a philosophical and political criticism of consumerism, post-war Italy, fascism, and how the "body becomes merchandise." He also said that the he used fascism as a "symbol for something far more pervasive."

Although the film is credited as being a loose adaptation of Marquis De Sade's novel, The 120 Days of Sodom or The School of Libertinage, it is also known that, during WWII, prisoners in concentration camps were kidnapped for fascists and other people to do whatever they wished with them, and many Holocaust survivors claim to have witnessed sexual abuse similar to the abuse shown in Salò. It is very likely that events similar to those portrayed in Salò have happened in real life before.

Additionally, a Nazi-backed puppet state set up in Italy from 1943-1945. The events in the film take place in 1944. Pier Paolo Pasolini lived through that era and lost his brother during it, which is why he took the events from the novel The 120 Days of Sodom, originally written in France in 1785, and set them in Salò.