From the 1960s: Victim

1961 Drama

From Astor Pictures Corp.

From Basil Dearden

Starring

Dirk Bogarde

Sylvia Syms

Dennis Price

John Barrie

Peter Copley

Peter McEnery

Derren Nesbitt

John Cairney

With homosexuality as its centerpiece, this was a revolutionary and very controversial British film for 1961.  The neo noir suspenser was the first English language film to use the word homosexual.  What made the production all the more surprising was that in 1961 homosexuality was still against the law in England. It would not change for six more years.

When the movie came to the U.S. the Motion Picture Association of American Production Code, the guardian of the country's morals, refused to issue its seal of approval. A year later, however, the U.S. lifted the restriction.

This taboo-busting flick needed something to make it more of a crowd pleaser for audiences of the day which is why the film has an exciting blackmail theme and a good examination of police procedures.  It is compelling from start to finish as a thriller.

Popular British actor Dirk Bogarde turns in an elegant performance as a successful married barrister who is being blackmailed with a picture of himself and another man (Peter McEnery) in the front seat of a car in which the other man is crying and Bogarde is comforting him in a non-sexual but to some a suggestive manner.

McEnery is on the run from the law because he has stolen money from his employer to also pay the blackmailer.  When he calls Bogarde to warn him, Bogarde assumes he is the blackmailer and tells him to never call again.  When McEnery does call again, Bogarde hangs up on him.  After McEnery commits suicide, Bogarde learns the truth.

And he decides rather secretly to look into it once he learns of some of the others being blackmailed.  He contacts them with a mixture of results.  The police also contact him but he feels he must play it in a cagey manner.  He has a lot to lose if his homosexuality becomes public.

That brings about another dilemma... his marriage.  His wife (Sylvia Syms) pieces some things together when she learns of McEnery's suicide and that her husband was involved with him.  Their confrontation on the subject, for me, is the film's highlight.  It seems that Bogarde and McEnery's relationship was not sexual.  Bogarde had a sexual relationship with a man just prior to marrying and he promised Syms he would never do it again.  During their confrontation he confirmed he kept that promise but he didn't want to.  Rather than being happy he kept his promise, she flew into a rage because he didn't want to.  She decides to leave him.  (Apparently this scene was partially written by Bogarde.)

Bogarde and Syms

I thought it was very telling (and modern) that the wife didn't appear to be as disturbed by his sexuality as she is his betrayal.  Even then it is a perceived betrayal because he didn't actually act upon it and, in fact, ended the relationship.  (That ending was at the heart of the crying picture in the car.)

He is devastated at her decision but it propels him forward to play along with the blackmailers and expose them despite the cost of his job and reputation.  And he does just that which impresses his wife and the film ends with the suspicion that the couple will work out the problems.

Bogarde wasn't offered the role until James Mason, Stewart Granger and Jack Hawkins turned it down.  Considering the times, it was brave of him to take the part and braver yet when one considers Bogarde was not only gay himself but deeply closeted.  He has said his friends begged him not to sign on but he was tired of the types of roles he'd been offered and had accepted and wanted to do something radically different.

I've always found it amusing that some critics have accused Bogarde of being too melancholy, reserved and anguished in the role.  What!?!?    As someone who more or less went through what this character did in a marriage, whointhehell wouldn't be a bit melancholy and anguished?  As for reserved, have they never seen British films?  Oh, I kid the British.  They needed a reserved, classy, polished gentleman to play this role and in hiring the handsome Bogarde, they succeeded on all counts.  It's a masterful performance and he would receive the best notices of his career.  He later said it is one of the few landmark films he ever did.

Syms, too, gave her role all the nuances and shadings that made it shine.  She is certainly not the villain of the piece.  She knew who she married.  She knew his past and was willing to look beyond it provided he was no longer acting upon it.  And once she recovered from the shock of it all, she was willing to resume life with a man she very much loved.

Peter McEnery

I loved McEnery back in the day.  It would have been difficult to turn him down!  He tears into a performance that is a heady mixture of fright and suspense and honest emotion.  Too bad he wasn't in it longer but then it would have been a different film.  The actor said that he received many letters from gay men praising his work (and Bogarde said the same).

Derren Nesbitt is one of the blackmailers and as the heavy of the piece delivers a cunning performance.  He has played a lot of villains in his mainly British career.  John Barrie is good as a sympathetic police inspector who feels that the antiquated laws invite blackmail.

Director Dearden apparently was pleased with how this film turned out.  He said he loved controversial subjects.  It was the third and best of four films he made with Bogarde.

Bold though the presentation of homosexuality may be, it is not done in a sensational or unsympathetic way.   It is, however, more a crime film, even a thriller that provides the excitement and with that said, it can also be applauded for being a very decent character study.  The truth, dignity and pathos of husband and wife are touching. 

I applaud the Brits for this film and it has been said that it helped pave the way for changes in the law.  I find it fascinating that the law was what it was for most of the Swinging 60s in Britain.  Apparently it didn't swing both ways. 

Gay audiences of today probably take exception with the title (very much disliked at the time by the author of the source material) and they may also find the treatment of the story as a bit timid.  I say one must remember the times in which this film was made and I have always regarding the title as referring more to the blackmailing angle than the gay one.  Regardless, for gays especially and with a salute to gay history, this is a film that deserves to be seen.

Here's a trailer:

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