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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 408144" data-attributes="member: 23">Victim (1961) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.posteritati.com%2Fposters%2F000%2F000%2F027%2F152%2Fvictim-md-web.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=0abb9de586754754c9019379e3e10d676898da82141f17ad09fed5002d5efb10&ipo=images" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 618px" /> Context of the time and place makes a huge difference to appreciating this one. Watching Victim now,  it feels at times like the kind of film that I feel I might have stumbled upon one rainy Sunday afternoon in the Eighties. It's dramatic and most certainly dark at times, but also accessible with lots of charming period footage of London (mostly central and West/SW, I think) to hold the interest. But it captures much more than just the physical world of the time. It goes far deeper in its exploration of Britain in the early-Sixties. How this film is received could depend on the starting point. Certainly I was born into a generation where homosexuality had been partially decriminalised, but was also acutely aware of the inequity when it came to the age of consent or relationship privileges. We now have a generation who have only ever known a world where acceptance and inclusivity is the standard (the listing on ITV provides a helpful warning for the oversensitive: "Contains outdated language and attitudes which some viewers may find offensive"). Gay men and women can - and increasingly do - get married, produce biological children, get in over their heads with joint mortgages, and buy into any area of status-related crap society says they need to be complete. These First World problems are a world away from a short time ago when sex between consenting men was a criminal act and committed couples, if they were found out, faced imprisonment or blackmail. In a literal sense, being gay was still "the love that dare not speak its name", with homosexuality only spoken about in euphemistic terms. But this was the world in which Victim was made. And it is the film's raison d'être. This is exactly why Victim is so important. The facts it exposed were very real, and the much-needed discourse coming from putting it into the mainstream public consciousness would certainly have been an important stepping stone towards the initial reforms which would come in 1967. There's no doubt this is a film with a message, and an important one. There are moments when the dialogue is a tad preachy. That is to say, it necessarily gives voice to facts that would have been implicitly understood by gay men at the time. As a result, occasional moments of exposition - such as earnestly decrying "the blackmail charter" - have an unintentional whiff of Meg Richardson's "I never should have swerved to avoid that cat".  As said, it was necessary to do this for the story to make sense to those who weren't aware of the politics, so it's all for the greater good. It was certainly a big help watching the film six decades down the line. Overall, the film's voice is a strong one. What is not said feels as though it comes from a place of understanding audience intelligence rather than censorship. And what is says is powerful. There's no hiding behind euphemisms or mistaking what this film is saying. The word "homosexual" is openly used, along with slurs like "queer", "invert" and "perversion". And there's also Melville Farr's candid admission to his wife "(b)ecause I wanted him". Do you understand? Because I WANTED HIM!" (a line said to be written by Dirk Bogarde himself to avoid any danger of the film skirting the issue of his character's involvement). And this brings me to a key strength of the film: the performances. Ugly truths are brought out in to the open, but it's extremely disarming to find numerous examples of gay men which mostly avoids stereotyping. Some are more pleasant than others (which is fine. I'll take nuance over saccharine any day) but the film invites a great deal of empathy from the audience. It seems to have been much-said that Dirk Bogarde was courageous to take on this role which in many ways echoed his own life as a closeted gay man, and this is true - particularly when it's considered that he pushed to make the film's subject matter truthful and for his character to openly express his feelings for another man. But many of the actors were heterosexual and at this time that, too, to play these parts would have taken a great degree of bravery. With this in mind, it's heartening to see almost all of them are sensitively and truthfully played. The film presents several different ways in which characters respond to the blackmail, all of them horrifying prospects:[ISPOILER] We see the man who commits suicide to avoid harming others with exposure. We see the man who sells out and gives the blackmailers the names of his friends in exchange for the promised return of the material which gives them a hold over him. And we see the man who has everything to lose decide it's still worth what might be gained from being transparent and speaking the truth out loud and in public. In each of these I found myself feeling sympathy. [/ISPOILER] In among the persecution, there are moments of unexpected compassion that take the viewer by surprise. John Barrie as the Detective Inspector and Noel Howlett as Farr's assistant William are two that stuck with me, leaving a sense of hope in humanity to balance things out. One of those rare films that feels equally important as both a work of art and an important social document.</blockquote>

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