Movie review - "Victim" (1961) **** (warning: spoilers)

Remarkable movie which has aged better than you might think. As one of the first films to tackle homosexuality head on it's received a lot of nit picking over the years (such is the lot of pioneering movies - people get sick of them). The two main strikes against it seem to have been (a) it's done in a polite, formal style of say Terence Rattigan and (b) the majority of gay characters are weak and cowardly.

Well to tackle the first issue - not it's not the British new wave and Basil Dearden wasn't a great stylist but a polite, formal style at least means the story is well structured and the acting strong - and it also suits the world of the film, a polite, formal British society with this undercurrent.  As for the second, that definitely does have validity - but it's required dramatically to increase Dirk Bogarde's heroism, and his character is gay.

Bogarde may not have come out of the closet in real life but few actors did it more on screen (at least in a non camp way) - whether overtly as here and Death in Venice or more obliquely as in The Servant and Cast a Dark Shadow. It's a superb performance - a risk that paid off in spades for him as the terribly nice, handsome barrister who basically gives up everything (his marriage, career) to avenge the suicide of a man who was obsessed with him. I can't believe they originally wanted Jack Hawkins - although mind you that could have been effective. I just can't imagine a young boy wanting to kill himself over Hawkins - Bogarde just gets away with it. (James Mason, the second choice, also would have been interesting). The famous scene where Bogarde confesses his desire for the young man remains powerful; maybe it's a cop out he didn't act on his urges, but it's totally consistent with the character and the times, and that scene is in there.

Other actors are also good - I liked Dennis Price as the Noel Coward type. Sylvia Syms is the wife.

 

The script occasionally falls into characters spouting slabs of "this is one point of view of people in society" and "this is another one" that you saw sometimes on Law and Order. Also the blackmailer character, with his dark sunglasses and jazz music accompaniment sometimes seemed over the topic. But the film gets props for finishing with the blackmailers unrepentant - one cocky, the other (nasty female) motivated by homophobia. I was genuinely surprised that two comic pub characters were revealed to be blackmailers - all social issue aside, this film works purely as a whodunnit and look at blackmail.

A very, very fine film and Bogarde was gutsy as hell to do it.