Released in 1961, Victim tells the story of lawyer, Melville Farr’s attempts to uncover a blackmail ring targeting gay men at a time when homosexuality was criminalised in the UK. In the ‘confession’ scene between Farr and his wife Laura, it also becomes evident that Farr himself is a homosexual as he tells his wife, “I stopped seeing him because I wanted him”.[1] With the first English-language film to use the word “homosexual” and the first British film to centre its narrative around male homosexuality, Victim was a highly talked about film upon its release and continues to direct us to the social issues of the time.
Victim, 1:06:29 
Victim, 1:49:43
Among these issues were the popularly reported scandals of high-profile men being involved in homosexual acts. Farr is represented as the textbook representation of the ‘respectable homosexual’ and can be compared to figures such as Lord Montagu, Michael Pitt-Rivers ad Peter Wildeblood who were all arrested for crimes concerning ‘conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons’[2] in 1954. In Wildeblood’s memoir, Against the Law, he notes the great deal of public sympathy he received during the trial, reflecting how Victim made me, and I’m sure many others, feel towards the victims of blackmail in the film, particularly Jack Barrett.
As well as instigating Wildewood to write this memoir about coming out as a homosexual and the treatment he received in the hands of the law, this trial was also a catalyst in setting up the Wolfenden Committee. This was set up to examine the law against homosexual offences and prostitution with its report in 1957 stating that homosexuality ‘is a state or condition, and as such does not, and cannot, come within the purview of the criminal law’.[3] The Wolfenden Report gave British filmmakers the courage to include homosexual themes into their work but Victim was seen as particularly progressive and liberal because many of the film’s characters actively dismiss the criminalising law and even suggest endeavours to change it. Examples of this are shown in Detective Inspector Harris’s condemnation that “a law which sends homosexuals to prison offers unlimited opportunities for blackmail” and Farr’s determination to “draw attention to the fault in the existing law”[4] by appearing in court.
Victim gives the homosexual community a voice but alongside this, I think Farr’s wife, Laura, is an ideal example of the way the Wolfenden Report urged the public to view homosexuality in the 1950s and early 1960s. Rather than an illness, the report saw homosexuality as a disability and something that meant a man was underdeveloped. In the ‘confession’ scene in the film, despite us never being shown the damning photograph, it is made obvious that Farr has been accused of being involved in homosexuals before, but Laura has stuck by his side in her belief that she can support her husband with the normality of their heterosexual marriage. When Farr is again found to be associated with a homosexual man, Laura threatens to leave her husband. It was thought that if an effort had been made to help citizens conform to the patriarchy, but they were too much of a ‘true homosexual’,[5] they should be treated as a handicapped minority. Laura reflects these feelings of giving up and letting her husband give in to his desire by leaving him. However, after Farr tells Laura he needs her in the last scene of the film, Laura seems to forgive him for his wrongdoings again and welcomes him back into her life. This is confirmed by Farr when he burns the photographs that the blackmailers used against him of him and Barrett.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and exploring the historical context behind it. Despite its alignment with Wolfenden and potentially Wildeblood’s views on camp homosexuals as ‘pathetically flamboyant pansies’ due their exclusion from the storyline, Victim manages to show homosexuality in a new light that shines in the complete opposite direction of comedy and comic relief. I think the trailer alone, with its jump-cut shots of Barrett, Farr, Doe, Calloway and Mandrake, shows that it is the homosexuals as victims that is the focus of the film. In addition to the film being a call for the decimalisation (or at least partial decriminalisation) of homosexuality, Andy Medhurst suggests it is also one that ‘advocates coming out’[6] so with this in mind, Victim’s influence is just as important now as it was in the 1960’s.
[1] Victim, dir. by Basil Dearden (Rank Film Distributers, 1961).
[2] Peter Wildeblood, Against the Law (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), p. 50.
[3] Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (London: HMSO, 1956), p. 11.
[4] Victim.
[5] Richard Hauser, The Homosexual Society (London: Bodley Head, 1962), p. 25.
[6] Medhurst, p. 31.
Queer History Through Film 