The blackmailer's charter: victims in British film and theatre.

• Author: Normey, Rob
• Position: Law and Literature - Movie review

I recently saw the 1961 British film Victim, starring one of my favorite actors, Dirk Bogarde. Dirk plays the highly successful barrister, Melville Farr, expected by his staff to take silk very soon (that is, become an eminent Queen's Counsel, with a judgeship in his bright future as well). We see Farr in his chambers and outside the Old Bailey courtroom at various points and can readily see that he is a smooth barrister who can be expected to robustly defend his client's interests, as we barristers like to say. Pity the poor witness, we are made to feel, who keeps important information from Farr--he will persevere until the truth topples out.

In this social message film, director Basil Dearden drops several hints early on, however, that the days of effortlessly climbing the legal ladder may soon be tested for this man for all seasons. Scenes from legal chambers are crosscut with the very different world of a young man in serious trouble with some most unsavoury individuals. Further, the young man, Boy Barrett, is alarmed upon hearing that the police want him for questioning and makes increasingly desperate efforts to decamp from London in order that he might lay low. Victim goes on to reveal the deepening tragedy brought about by a brief relationship that Farr and Barrett had. That most taboo subject for Englishmen is then carefully but unflinchingly introduced --homosexuality. We learn that Barrett is a homosexual and that Farr, despite being married, had apparently yielded to the homosexual impulses. Barrett has been mercilessly hounded by blackmailers who have developed a most lucrative business--spying on gay men and then taking advantage of the fact that all homosexual behaviour constitutes a crime--to blackmail and threaten ruin to all those whose sexual orientation they have uncovered. Beneath the surface lay untold dangers for those who didn't fit the sexual norms of the intolerant, blinkered majority of 1950s England.

A "social message" film like this one has its built-in limitations and lacks the qualities of personal meditation and voice that the greatest films possess. Nonetheless within the confines of the genre, this film stands out as a genuine cri de coeur by individuals concerned about the glaring discrimination and injustice faced by homosexuals. Dirk Bogarde was himself a gay man, although not one who was "out of the closet" at the time the film was released. He obviously took on this project on the basis that the story...