Hope for the 'most vile' film

Some say we live in liberal times. But that view is about to be put to the ultimate test. Within the next couple of weeks, a movie which has been described as the most "vile", most "disgusting ever made" will yet again be submitted to the British film censor, this time for a video certificate.

And, despite the fact that it is more than 25 years old and the last classic European film to be banned from British screens, there's no guarantee that the censor will pass Pier Paolo Pasolini's Sal˜.

"If there's such a thing as an ugly jewel or an ugly butterfly that would be Sal˜," says American author Gary Indiana, adding that "it's one of the few films that really burns a hole in the medium". According to Indiana, who has just written a monograph on Sal˜, it is the work of a genius. "Pasolini is one of the premier intellectuals of the 20th century. This is one of the last truly ambitious films from European cinema," he says. "It tries to take on an analysis of our whole society."

But for most people Sal˜ is synonymous with the depths of depravity. It is based on the Marquis de Sade's notorious 120 Days of Sodom, which Pasolini reset in Fascist Italy during the last days of the war. Here, within a chillingly stylish mansion, four Fascist-libertines round up 16 local villagers, each chosen for their youth and beauty, and inflict upon them a series of appalling sexual humiliations - the unimaginable is made visible (let's just say the props department had to provide a lot of chocolate mousse). After every permutation of horror the film ends with the middle-aged tormentors taking it in turns to torture their prey to death in a scene that is mercifully short.

Not surprisingly, the film has had a troubled past, especially in such a censorship-prone country as Britain. However, it has never been without its admirers, often in high places. When Sal˜ was first submitted for release in the UK in 1975, Britain's chief film censor James Ferman thought that it was "a remarkable picture" which should not be "consigned to darkness". Ferman would have been willing to stand up for the film being passed uncut had it not been for the death of Pasolini that November in the coastal resort of Ostia, just outside Rome. The mysterious circumstances surrounding the director's untimely end at the hands of a young male prostitute now meant that Sal˜ had became too much of a hot potato.

Yet Ferman still wasn't going to abandon what he believed to be "the last film from a major film-maker". Although he knew he couldn't possibly give the film a BBFC classification without extensive cuts, there was still a way to get Sal˜ shown in this country. A loophole in the law meant that an uncut version could be shown in a cinema club - where, to this day, a certificate is not necessary. So, back in 1977, that's what he suggested to Curtis Elliott, the owner of the Old Compton Cinema Club in Soho.

It turned out to be foolhardy advice. Almost before the film ended, it was confiscated by the Metropolitan Police on the grounds that Mr Elliott was "keeping a disorderly house". The desperate club owner rang James Ferman. "What have you done to me?" he screamed. "I've been showing sex films for years and I've never had the police in my office until I showed this film - which you said was reputable."

From there Sal˜ sank into even more indignity. In order to make back the money he had paid United Artists to distribute the film, Elliott arranged for whole scenes to be ripped out, and, in a failed attempt to bypass the Obscene Publications Act in 1977, he even added a six-minute prologue superimposed over a map of northern Italy, which pinpointed the real town of Sal˜. Throughout the late Seventies this version was shown at the Scala cinema in King's Cross but, because it was the only print and wearing a bit thin, the Sellotape which cobbled together the various cuts started to come apart.

But Sal˜ has lived on - despite its intermittent and ragged appearances on the British screen. Its influence in this country has been surprisingly wide-ranging: Ken Russell, Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman have acknowledged the importance of Sal˜ in their work. And it has not only fuelled the vision of film-makers.

Right now, the most obvious proof of Sal˜'s extensive impact can be seen in the Apocalypse exhibition at the Royal Academy. Here, one of the most controversial exhibits, the Chapman brothers' Hell, makes a direct reference to Sal˜'s final scene, in which one of the libertines observing the atrocities reverses his binoculars to make the action recede. Look in the far corner of the ninth glass case of Jake and Dinos Chapman's epic nine-part vision of Armageddon and you'll see a tiny twoheaded figure looking down on the atrocities unfolding below. And guess what? He's looking through a reversed telescope.