In the final days of World War II, fascism’s thirst for absolute power remains locked away in a quiet corner of Italy. As Pier Paolo Pasolini brings the Marquis de Sade’s perverse text to the screen, he traps the audience in a dark mental siege. The domination that power intoxication and sadism exert over human flesh creates a suffocating heaviness that seeps from the screen. On the fringes of political decay and depravity, humanity’s most primal instincts are disregarded. One of the harshest examples of the horror and drama genres, this film stands in one of the most unsettling corners of cinematic history due to its banned past. This enclosed space, controlled by four depraved libertines, lays bare the absolute destruction that authority inflicts upon the individual. Pasolini’s uncompromising philosophy leaves the viewer face to face with a sense of unease that cannot be easily digested.

2 wins total