Back in 1961, this must-see neo-noir helped change British perceptions of homosexuality

Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we’re revisiting 1961’s Victim, the first British film to directly address homosexuality and depict it in a sympathetic light.

It may be a cliché expression at this point, but there’s no denying that one of the absolute core foundations of queer life is community.

Everyone that identifies within the LGBTQ+ umbrella in bonded not only by a sexual orientations and/or gender expressions that diverge from mainstream heteronormativity, but through much deeper bonds of love, friendship, language, and a shared history and culture. As part of the queer community, you share a unique, intrinsic connection with thousands of other people around the world and throughout history.

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And as long as there’s been “queer film,” there have been artists and filmmakers seeking to capture and portray this grander sense of community and often unspoken connection on screen.

Where the majority of these stories tend to focus on the connective senses of love, freedom, and authenticity that exist within these spaces and circles, this week’s film takes a different approach at portraying what unites us all.

The Set-Up

Victim—director Basil Dearden’s groundbreaking British film from 1961—takes a step away from this sense of safety and community that was built in underground and private spaces. It places the action in the middle of the society that banished us, among discriminatory and life-ruining laws, forcing us to live in the shadows.

It makes the argument that, before friendship and love and shared interests, the thing that truly bonds the queer community is a survival instinct against a society that wants to get rid of us.

Victim follows the story of Melville Farr (an exceptional Dirk Bogarde, who is now recognized to have lived his life as a closeted gay man), a barrister at the center of a blackmailing ring that is targeting homosexuals at a time where British decency laws made it illegal. When one of his former flames, a young factory worker named Barrett (Peter McEnery), is arrested and commits suicide, Melville becomes the main target of the ring. They have pictures of him and Boy that threaten his rising career and married life.

As he tries to track down the blackmailers and keep his true self in the shadows, he stumbles upon a group of other closeted men in the community that have also been getting blackmailed; acquaintances, businessmen, true regular working-class people.

Eventually, he is faced with the decision of paying the blackmail (and thus becoming legally complicit in it), or track and turn them in, even if that means destroying his career and reputation. With the help of his wife, he decides to work with the authorities, leading to the arrest of the blackmailers, and decides to step forward into the public light to help eradicate these harmful laws.

Out Of The Shadows

Victim excels as a film in many different levels. As a neo-noir, it employs cinematography, lighting, and black-and-white composition quite effectively to frame the way the characters are constantly hidden in the shadows, living in literal and metaphorical darkness, with their true selves constantly being obscured (both as the blackmailers, but also as the victims). There is constant tension built throughout, the narrative and emotional stakes grow as the film moves along, and the performances are committed and filled with humanity.

This last element seems like a particular feat, especially for the time period. The film has a cast in which the majority of the lead male characters are playing gay, and the actors portray them with remarkable complexity, nuance and empathy.

The film is set during a time period where gay men were actively being prosecuted, and many characters in the film voice the arguments for why (many of which eerily still resonate today). But the film is decidedly on the gay men’s side, making us care and root for them, and showing us the fear and torturous circumstances they are forced to live under. 

Caught In The In-Between

What makes this film feel so exceptional and so ahead of its time is the depiction of a gay community before the concept of a gay community really existed or solidified itself as what we know it to be today. These are not gay men taking a weekend off in Fire Island, or throwing furtive parties in their apartments, or gathering at the local bar with black-out windows (not to say these did not exist back then, because they did).

But the movie depicts the in-between moments of their lives; the men without a place to go or a person to turn to. It focuses on the people that have decided to isolate themselves and live alone because acting on their true nature can get them arrested or killed. Those that forced themselves into family lives trying to erase their own identities.

Surviving Together

As Farr goes through the city trying to locate the victims of blackmail, there is a shift that happens when he identifies himself as a fellow homosexual with them. An immediate connection. What seemed threatening a minute ago for them, suddenly becomes a bond, no words necessary. The movie argues that it’s that feeling, that immediate flicker of recognition, that is the foundation of the queer community. The survival instinct that keeps pulling us towards each other. 

Victim was (unsurprisingly) highly controversial when it was first released, but his since been credited for helping shift the conversation forward when it comes to the perception of homosexuality in Great Britain.

Today, it remains one of the most bold depictions of homosexuality, as it made the radical and somehow also obvious statement that what binds us together is not just our shared joy, but also our shared pain.

Victim is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel and Max, and is available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon Prime Video and AppleTV.

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