Victim. 1961. Directed by Basil Dearden.

(9/1/00)

[Note: I have fallen increasingly behind in discussing the fils I have seem. Victim and Black Narcissus were viewed several weeks ago and hence are not fresh in my mind.]


Victim is a film about homosexuality and blackmail. It is a thriller or whodunit, but it is also a film exposing the harm done by the laws against homosexuality.

A young man flees from the police. He is caught, but before he is he attempts to destroy a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about an important barrister. Thinking that he has destroyed this link with a man he loved and admired, he commits suicide in his cell.

The film makes a very convincing case about the harm caused by these laws and the opportunities they provide for blackmail. And it is inspiring to see an important man, played by Dirk Bogarde, have the courage to stand up and fight it out with the blackmailers, knowing that he is throwing away a prestigious career.

However, it is unfortunate that the filmmakers had to somehow exonerate this man. He was gay by inclination, but because he was a lawyer he had to deny his impulses. He never had an affair with the young man, although there is an incriminating photograph of the two of them together. Perhaps it was necessary for the filmmakers to do this, but it does mar the film. It would have been more believable if the man had been a practicing homosexual. But the film is still effective for all that.

What the film does do very well is show up the sheer nastiness of the people who want to see homosexuals punished. Nastiest of all is the mastermind of the blackmail scheme. It is a woman, of course, who is most anxious to see these deviates behind bars. On the other side of the coin there is a kindly police officer who only reluctantly supports the laws against homosexuals. He comes across as knowledgeable, sane and tolerant.

One thing I didn't like was that the film threw the audience a red herring in the form of other blackmailers. We see them hanging around the post office, so we naturally assume that they are the blackmailers that Bogarde and the others are trying to unmask--only they aren't. They are other blackmailers and that seemed rather pointless.

I very much liked the photography of exterior scenes in this film. The opening shots of the construction site from which the young man fled the police have a quality to them which reminded me of Italian neo-realism.