La victime

Set in 1950's Britain at a time when homosexuality is against the law, a top Barrister ( Dirk Bogarde) puts his career on the line to tackle the outrageous blackmail of London's homosexuals.

Impressive cast and outstanding performance by Dirk Bogarde as the troubled barrister whose anguish and pain one can see in his face throughout the film. Watching this now in the 21st century, it seems unbelievable to think that homosexuality was illegal here forty years ago. This is not to say that homophobia is not a concern now, because it still is, however there have been large strides forward for the acceptance and tolerance of homosexuals in mainstream society.

This film is an excellent historical snippet at a time of contentious laws as well as being a fine piece of art. Basil Dearden directs brilliantly and the script maintains a gripping interest throughout. In addition it was nice to see many parts of London as they were in the fifties before factories were knocked down and the hordes of yuppie apartments where built along the Thames.

This is the story of Melville Farr, a high-ranking English barrister who has just been offered an appointment to be a Queen's Counselor. But Farr is gay, and in investigating who has been blackmailing a friend he is exposed to being blackmailed himself. How Farr deals with this and the impact it has on his career and marriage makes for a quality drama.

I was thinking that in order to appreciate this film you had to put yourself back in the time when homosexuality was against the law in England, since we have now come such a long way from that time to where some elected officials are now openly gay. On the other hand, the basic theme of this movie still plays. A closeted high-ranking lawyer with a reputation as an upstanding family man could still be open to blackmail. People are still "accused" or "suspicioned" of being gay and often feel the need to defend themselves against such charges, as if there were something inherently wrong with it. Acceptance of differences comes slowly.

The performances are good, particularly Bogard and Syms. Lovers of skillfully filmed high contrast black and white will appreciate this - it's an art form that has pretty much disappeared. The first half hour, before you really know what's going on, is particularly engrossing. It plays in the style of a film noir thriller.

The one thing I found a bit bothersome was the apparent need for the characters to vocalize their plight, with statements like "Don't they understand that we are just like anyone else," and "Why are we singled out," and so forth. The plot makes these points well enough, what with a suicide, a heart attack, ruined careers, and multiple blackmails.

However, it probably took a fair amount of courage at the time just to make this film, which was clearly a plea for legal reform. Reform that came six years later in 1967.

During his lifetime Dirk Bogarde never admitted to being gay and before his death he destroyed many of his private papers. Nevertheless, his sexuality has long been an open secret and Bogarde's desire to keep his private life private had to be respected. It was, therefore, an astonishingly brave decision to take on the role of Melville Farr, the closeted gay barrister who is willing to 'come out' in order to break a blackmailing ring in Basil Dearden's pioneering thriller "Victim".

Bogarde says he chose the part because he wanted to break free of the matinée idol roles he had played up to that time but by doing so he risked alienating his fan-base. Of course, by playing Farr and subsequent roles in films like "The Servant" and "Death in Venice" it could be argued that he was vicariously acting out on screen what he was feeling in real life.

That "Victim" was made at all is as astonishing as Bogarde's decision to take the lead. This was 1961 and homosexuality was still illegal in Britain. "Victim" broke new ground by making it the central theme and by making the gay characters sympathetic, the victims of the title, and by making the law, (at least in the form of John Barrie's investigating copper), sympathetic to their plight. This was a crusading work and is today largely credited with bring about the change in the law that decriminalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in Great Britain.

Viewed today it is, of course, both melodramatic and didactic. At times it seems the characters aren't saying lines but making speeches. As a thriller it's reasonably exciting, (it's got sufficient red-herrings to keep us guessing), and Dearden admitted that without the thriller element the film might never have been made. (He did something similar with racism in the film "Sapphire").

"Victim" also featured a number of other gay actors in the cast, notably Dennis Price, superb as an ageing actor, and the actor/director Hilton Edwards. Whatever his motives for taking on the role, Bogarde is superb and he has at least one great scene when he finally admits his true nature to his wife, beautifully played by Sylvia Syms. There is certainly no doubt the film has dated and yet it remains one of the greatest of all gay movies.

From what I have read, this was the first British film ever to use the word "homosexual" in the dialogue. That may, or may not, be technically true. Regardless, in 1961, overt gay references were risky to filmmakers, at least in Britain and the United States. Thus, the most amazing thing about "Victim" is the simple fact that it was made.

The film's theme is anything but subtle. Viewers in 1961 learn that government laws punish gays and encourage blackmailers, who function as predators to extort money from those whose instincts are out of sync with societal "norms". The film thus portrays gay men as prey, and tending to be secretive, scared, nervous, and sad. Dirk Bogarde gives an excellent performance as a powerful married barrister, secretly gay, who thinks he himself is on the verge of being blackmailed.

But while the film thus has obvious educational benefits, it is also quite entertaining, thanks to the plot rationale, which revolves around trying to guess who the blackmailer is. It's a whodunit mystery. Well into the film, a rather strange looking young man appears on a motorcycle and proceeds to chastise a barber for trying to escape from impending blackmail payments. But is this young man the real blackmailer, or just an envoy?

Adding to the entertaining plot line is the wonderfully off-kilter, noirish lighting from DP Otto Heller. The B&W cinematography conveys an appropriately moody, sometimes sinister, tone, consistent with the film's theme.

Some films try to be educational but end up preachy. Other films succeed at being educational, but lack entertainment value. "Victim" succeeds both as education and as entertainment, owing to its daring and absorbing screen story, its excellent direction, its good performances, and its effective cinematography.

Five years before Parliament repealed the sodomy laws in Great Britain, unfortunately too late for the colonies they had already let go in the third world who still have vigorously enforced sodomy laws on the books, Basil Dearden directed this ground breaking film Victim about a group of gay men being blackmailed.

The ring starts to unravel when young Peter McEnery is caught embezzling funds from his construction firm. But this embezzler is hardly living it up considering the money he's taken. When the police investigate and try to get the truth out of him, McEnery hangs himself in his cell.

What else back then could he have done he thought? He was guilty of breaking the law for an act of love that could have gotten him jail time. One of the people McEnery thinks of when he looks for money to quickly leave the United Kingdom was barrister Dirk Bogarde. But Bogarde refuses to see him.

Bogarde was like so many gay men who even today still live in the closet because of pressure in the areas they do live and in the professions they are in. But back then being open could close a lot of career doors to one. But his back is up and he's figuring whoever is blackmailing McEnery will be knocking on his door shortly.

Of course the hard part is telling wife Sylvia Sims of his predicament. He's married to her because convention expects it. He was in fact more open with her about his life than either Heath Ledger or Jake Gyllenhaal was in Brokeback Mountain, but he said to her he'd left all that behind when he took the marriage vows. I'm sure he tried also in his own way.

And he's feeling guilty a bit about McEnery's death. It sends him on a quest to flush these bottom feeding slime balls out from under the rocks they were hiding under.

Bogarde of course was a closeted gay man himself and never quite came out in his life. He was in a committed relationship for over 40 years and was at the time of Victim. Another closeted gay man was Dennis Price who has a small role as an actor and another of the blackmailer's victims. These two guys were taking daring steps for 1961.

What I liked best about this film was the portrayal of the young blackmailer Derren Nesbitt. He hangs around the gay haunts of 1961 London at the time with his latest camera equipment just taking all kinds of candid shots for future use. There's a scene in his room where he's talking real tough on the phone to one of his victims. He gets up off his bed to leave the room and the camera takes in a picture on the wall of an anatomically correct Greek statue. This poor wretch of a human being was fighting his own feelings because of what society told him was wrong. Internalized homophobia can twist a soul like nothing else. That Basil Dearden was farsighted enough to pick up on that in people and use it in the film is commendable.

Bogarde knows his career will be in the toilet but does it anyway. I'd like to think when those laws were repealed which they would be later in the Sixties, he could pick the pieces up. Many never could.

Which brings to mind one of my claimants from my former job at New York State Crime Victims Board. A dear little man named Ernie who is probably not with us any longer. He was living in an SRO in New York City and was assaulted by a trick he picked up in the mid Eighties, Ernie was in his early sixties.

When I got to know him, I found out that he had a degree in political science and had graduated before World War II from the Columbia University School of Far East Studies. He had hopes to enter the Foreign Service, but the McCarthy era discouraged that. Back then he was a 'security risk' because of his sexual orientation. So robbed of the career he could have had by homophobia he slid gradually down the societal scale until I met him. He made a living doing secretarial temp work when he wasn't abusing a lot of substance.

As surely as Dirk Bogarde's career went, so did Ernie's in real life. And this review is dedicated to Ernie and all the others like him who could not realize their full potential because of some archaic mores.