"Rischiare la pellicola": Nascita del montaggio e fine del cinema in Salomè (1972) di Carmelo Bene

The work of Carmelo Bene is widely interpreted as a radical questioning of the notion of representation and of any conciliatory conception of artistic practice. If stories coming from Bene’s movie sets tell of his procedures expressly aimed at damaging his own films, on the other hand he often hinted at the frugality of those film projects, which were unwilling to “rischiare la pellicola”. Beyond anecdotes, this paper investigates Salomè (1972) as a central moment for understanding the constructive and deconstructive processes that characterise Bene’s work. By reading Oscar Wilde’s play in parallel with Bene’s movie, the decapitation of John the Baptist and the Dance of the Seven Veils are viewed as gestures rife with aesthetic, moral, and political implications. What emerges is the film’s theoretical and critical status. More than any of his occasional statements on the filmic medium, Salomè is Bene’s essay on the birth of montage and the end of cinema.