Victim
By all rights, Basil Dearden’s 1961 film Victim should not still be a topical subject for a film. It largely concerns closeted gay men and the very real danger they faced in 1960s Britain, where homosexuality was still punishable by prison and chemical castration. But it’s also a film about what it means to be homosexual in a dangerously homophobic society, and the lengths to which people will go to conceal their natures from a judgmental public.
Victim stars Dirk Bogarde as barrister Melville Farr, a wealthy and successful man with an attractive wife (Sylvia Syms) and an excellent career. When Boy Barrett (Peter McEnery) approaches him, Farr believes that Barrett wants to blackmail him with evidence of their romantic (but unconsummated) relationship.
[zergpaid]It soon becomes apparent that Barrett himself has been blackmailed and wants to warn Farr that someone has photographs of the two of them. This leads Farr into a hunt for the blackmailers in which he uncovers numerous other closeted men in London, all afraid of the destruction of their careers and the potential destruction of their lives.
Victim uses Farr’s investigation of the blackmailers as a way of exposing the inherent hypocrisy of 1960s Britain, and the fear of exposure under which many men were living. Most poignant is Farr’s relationship with his wife, who reveals that she has known of his homosexuality since they married and wants to protect him. Farr’s struggle against the desires that society tells him are wrong might be somewhat dated now, but it contains an essential truth about those living painfully repressed lives, unable to express their desires and love whom they want. Victim, in fact, was instrumental in the lifting of Britain’s anti-homosexual laws.
Published: Apr 15, 2015 09:22 am