Victim

Melville Farr is a successful barrister in London; married, and about to take silk. A young man keeps trying to reach him and Farr does not take the calls. When the young man is arrested and kills himself in a cell, Farr begins to look into it and finds an organised blackmail ring extorting money from homosexual men. Going after them means putting his own life on the table. Basil Dearden directs. Dirk Bogarde plays Farr and Sylvia Syms plays his wife. The context is the law. Sex between men was a crime in Britain at the time, which is exactly what made the blackmailers' work easy; the film says so directly and takes aim at the law itself. It is cited as the first English language film to use the word homosexual openly. The censorship board in the United States refused it a seal and its distribution there was hampered. Dirk Bogarde was a popular romantic lead at the time and taking the part was considered a serious risk to his career; he later described it as one of his most important choices. The structure is a detective story. The blackmail investigation carries the narrative, and that choice is what allowed the subject to be shown at all. It is among the films regularly cited in the argument that led to the change in the law in Britain in 1967. Who it is for: anyone interested in British film history and in social subjects told inside a genre. Who it is not for: the language belongs to its period and is cautious from here, some characters are types, and the narrative explains too much at the end.