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Victim Movie Review

Victim is a 1961 British neo-noir thriller film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Dirk Bogarde. It’s a very effective, groundbreaking movie.

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“I’m a policeman, sir.

I don’t have feelings“

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Lawyer Melville Farr is blackmailed for being homosexual at the cost of derailing his promising career. This movie is groundbreaking for being the first openly homosexual in subject matter English-language film, and especially for being pro-gay in its stance. Some may accuse it of being tame by today’s standards, but that type of critique is so unfair given that the movie was incredibly daring for the time and still very engaging and suspenseful to watch.

The film is a neo-noir in approach, meaning that it makes heavy use of its strong black-and-white cinematography, dark atmosphere, loud and ominous score and an entangled mystery storyline involving a lot of players, some of whom less interesting, but some most definitely intriguing to follow. In its tone and atmosphere, it perfectly evoked the noir pictures from their heyday. The first half did forsake some strong characterization in favor of that atmosphere, but the second half featured numerous twists and turns that all worked. The last one with the real blackmailer revealed was immaculate – you couldn’t see it before, but when you realized who it is, it made perfect sense.

Dirk Bogarde is terrific in the role of Farr. He was actually gay himself in real life, which made him very brave for having taken this highly provocative role for the time. His performance is by far the most emotive and strongest of the bunch, and it’s easy to root for the poor guy to escape his predicament.

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I also really appreciated Sylvia Syms in the role of his wife. Her performance is excellent. The confrontation that the two have is by far the most realistic, the most dramatic moment in the movie. Their final sequence was also powerful how raw and real it felt. Other characters are not as well developed as they all got smaller roles and the movie probably has an overly big cast of supporting players to handle. Still though, many managed to make an impression, the highlights being all of the villains who were truly noirish and sinister in nature as well the wonderful friend character played by Donald Churchill who is the most likable person of the bunch.

The gay relationships between were very bravely tackled. Although not directly shown on screen, they are discussed about extensively, which made the movie daring for its time in its openness about this subject. Most movies around this period would use coded language, but this one addressed it head on to a superb effect.

The technical aspects are outstanding, especially its creepy, grandiose score and fantastic cinematography. The suspense was mostly achieved and the movie mixed the thriller genre with the character drama mostly effectively, though at times I wished for stronger character development myself. It’s a wonderful message movie that features incredibly subtle, but still not overly ambiguous dialogue. It states its message without any emotional manipulation or preachiness, which made it elegant and wildly enjoyable to watch to this day.

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