Review of Victim (1961) by Issac L — 07 Apr 2012

Half a century's age, this hidden curio from UK cinema revolves around a series of homosexual blackmailing cases (while men could be put in jail simply for being gay), an eminent married lawyer in the closet decides to expose the extortion on account of his "young admirer" commits suicide in order not to comprehend him into the dark corner, so as to prompt to unseat the discrimination inside UK's legislative system and which will inexorably end his prominent career.

The film counts in a flock of various characters, among which mostly are gay men (of divergent ranks), under the milieu of repression, some are diffident and dodging, some are well-off and laissez-faire, and depicts a vivid gay scene at then with a briskly unobtrusive measure (in spite of multiply exploiting unsettling close-ups of faces to attenuate the dramatic currents), deftly projects Dirk Bogarde's heroic lawyer as the knight in shining armor to rescue the gay sub-culture being bullied and threatened.

Bogarde is bold (off the screen) and instinctively mesmerizing (on the screen) in the film, even subconsciously one could dive into his dilemma and being shepherded until the exit of the maze, remarkably it is not a common whodunit trickery, no actions, no noir atmosphere, it is a moral lecture with a cogent victory of defending oneself's nature. Sylvia Syms is steadfast in her role as the wife, knowingly indulging her marriage and naively believes there is an alternative, the two-hander between her and Bogarde is the zenith of this film.

The film's laconic 90 minutes length does seep some coerced discontentment, but frankly speaking the story has no loose end, one could divine its subsequent development in his own aftertaste.