Victim (Allied; Pathé-America), a British picture that the Johnston office has found "thematically objectionable," elaborates a startling statistic: in nine out of ten cases of blackmail in Britain, the victim is a homosexual. Why? The answer, as provided by a speech in the script: "A law which sends homosexuals to prison"—as Britain's does—"is a charter for blackmail." As the film begins, a young homosexual (Peter McEnery) who has robbed his employer to pay his extortionist is caught by the police. Rather than implicate the eminent barrister (Dirk Bogarde) with whom he is emotionally (though not sexually) involved, the boy commits suicide. Deeply shocked, the lawyer resolves to break up the extortion racket, even if he has to risk his marriage (Sylvia Syms) and wreck his career.
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.
But what seems at first an attack on extortion seems at last a coyly sensational exploitation of homosexuality as a theme —and, what's more offensive, an implicit approval of homosexuality as a practice.
Almost all the deviates in the film are fine fellows—well dressed, well spoken, sensitive, kind. The only one who acts like an overt invert turns out to be a detective.
Everybody in the picture who disapproves of homosexuals proves to be an ass, a dolt or a sadist. Nowhere does the film suggest that homosexuality is a serious (but often curable) neurosis that attacks the biological basis of life itself. "I can't help the way I am," says one of the sodomites in this movie. "Nature played me a dirty trick." And the scriptwriters, whose psychiatric information is clearly coeval with the statute they dispute, accept this sick-silly self-delusion as a medical fact.