Violence, sex, disgusting fantasies: These films caused outrage in the cinema
Some films may only be better watching once in life if you don’t even break them off. This includes « the 120 days of Sodom » (in the Italian original: « Salò o Le 120 Giornate di Sodoma »), which was shot 50 years ago. Anyone who dared to watch the work of the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini can hardly forget. It is one of the most controversial films in history, with the 1970s in particular being a decade full of experimental, explicit, disgusting and brutal stripes.
« The 120 days of Sodom »
At the end of the Mussolini period, a group of fascist major citizens dragged boys and girls into a villa on Lake Garda and subjects them to humiliating rituals (up to the food from feces). Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was not murdered half a year after the shoot, developed a repulsive vision of totalitarian systems in his last film. In some countries, the film was not sold or listed uncut for decades.
« Le Dernier Tango à Paris »
The revealing film by Bernardo Bertolucci from 1972 became famous for a sex scene with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. Later Schneider said: « I felt hurt and, to be honest, I also felt a little raped, by both, Marlon and Bertolucci. »
« Don’t look »
The supernatural thriller (German title: « When the gondolas wear mourning ») after a story by Daphne du Maurier with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland from 1973 is an exciting masterpiece. However, a lot is also talked about an unsurpassed love scene of the main actor couple directed by Nicolas Roeg. The lovemaking looks so authentic that it really seemed scandalous to some.
« Caligula »
It is probably the most bizarre art film of history. The epic from 1979 with Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren and Peter O’Toole is based on a book by Gore Vidal. The film was financed by the erotic magazine « Penthouse ». The producers concluded director Tinto Brass from the film cut and added hardcore porn scenes. Violence also remains in the memory, for example in the knowledge scene in the Maximus Circus or in the rape scene during a wedding. In 2023, « Caligula: The Ultimate Cut » came onto the market completely newly created from the old material.
You are back: sex scenes on the big screen
« Irréversible »
The film by Gaspar Noé, which is told chronologically backwards and demanding, is hard voyeuristic food. Toxic masculinity and violence that results from it is shown. At the premiere in Cannes 2002, many left the cinema hall outraged. The most controversial place: main character Alex (Monica Bellucci) is attacked and raped on the way home by a party in a pedestrian underpass.
« Antichrist »
The Dane Lars von Trier created some of the most discussed films of recent decades about topics such as violence, sex, grief and guilt. This horror thriller from 2009 is viewed with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe as particularly controversial: after her little son’s accident death, a psychologist and a scientist working through witch hunting go back to a wooden house in the forest. Sexual violence and psychoses enter into the couple’s life.
« The golden glove »
A film adaptation according to the novel by Heinz Strunk from 2019: Jonas Dassler plays the Hamburg serial killer Fritz Honka, who hid body parts of the killed women in his attic apartment in the 1970s. The monstrosity of history is presented very relentlessly.
« Saltburn »
The scandal film of 2023: For today’s standards, the thriller of Emerald Fennell (« Promising Young Woman ») contains quite provocative scenes, such as the bathing water in the main actor Barry Keoghan lust, masturbating on a grave or dancing splinter -fiber through a castle.
