Madonna’s favorite banned film returns for rare cinema screening

Directed by Pasolini, shortly before his brutal murder in 1975, Salò has retained its reputation as cinema’s most disturbing masterpiece.

The film was banned across Europe for decades and was condemned for its scenes of ritualized sexual violence, torture and humiliation. Its rediscovery now – in an age consumed by power, abuse and voyeurism – has reignited debate over whether it should ever have been made in the first place.

The Italian director was found beaten to death and run over by his own car just weeks before the film premiered. The shocking nature of both Salò and Pasolini’s death cemented his legend as one of Europe’s most controversial authors.

Based on the unfinished novel by Marquis de Sade The 120 days of SodomPasolini reimagined the story amid the fascist puppet state of Salò during World War II. In the film, four elites hold a group of teenage boys and girls captive and systematically abuse them in grotesque rituals – including an infamous banquet where they are served their own feces.

One of the film’s surviving actors, Marco Lucantoni, said prior to its return to the big screen: “Pasolini had seen fascism firsthand, and Salò was his way of exposing the physical and moral corruption of power. It wasn’t pornography, it was a warning. But it cost him dearly. He was playing with fire, and we all knew it.”

Another cast member, the late Paolo Bonacelli, who played the sadistic Duke, recalled that behind the camera the atmosphere was “lighthearted” despite the depravity on screen.

“Everyone is shocked by that scene,” he once said of the infamous “Circle of S—,” “but for us (we were eating) just chocolate and raisins.”

The Barbican screening comes despite the film’s long and controversial history with censorship. In 1977, a private exhibition in London’s Soho was raided by police, who confiscated the print for being ‘grossly indecent’.

The uncut version was not released for release in Britain until 2000. Salò has appeared sporadically in arthouse theaters, but remains unavailable on mainstream streaming platforms.

A source close to the Barbican film program said: “This is not a film we screen lightly. Salò still shocking, but that is precisely why it remains relevant. It’s about the abuse of power, the commodification of bodies and the way horror becomes spectacle – all themes that feel disturbingly modern.”

Over the years Salò has earned the admiration of some of pop culture’s most provocative figures. Director John Waters once called it ‘elegantly beautiful, but at the same time you can hardly look at it’.

Madonna famously showed the film to potential friends, employees and lovers as a litmus test for compatibility, telling them before they endured its horrors, “Watch this movie – and if you don’t like it, we can’t be friends.”

Despite the grotesque content, Salò has been reassessed by film scholars as a radical political statement.

Lucantoni added: “Pasolini foresaw what Italy – and the world – would become. He saw how power absolutely corrupts and how people can consume horror without flinching. That’s why it still matters, even fifty years later.”