Victim

The movie proceeds on two levels, as a crime thriller and as a character study, and it's this dual nature that makes it an entertainment at the same time it works as a message picture.

While some may be put off by talk of ”abnormalities,” the inner struggle depicted so poignantly in Victim has not dated at all.

This is telling, moving stuff.

A brave British melodrama from 1961, one of this country's first explorations of gay life on screen.

Victim has a neat plot, deft direction by Basil Dearden, and the sort of grum good manners one expects of the British in these trying situations. It also has a careful performance by Bogarde, and it pursues with eloquence and conviction the case against an antiquated statute.

Ingenious, moralistic, and moderately amusing.

As a straight piece of blackmail melodrama, it is a good bit below the British par. But as a frank and deliberate exposition of the well-known presence and plight of the tacit homosexual in modern society it is certainly unprecedented and intellectually bold.