Synopsis
Barrister Melville Farr is on the path to success. With his practice winning cases and a loving marriage to his wife, Farr's career and personal life are nearly idyllic. However, when blackmailers link the secretly closeted Farr to a young gay man, everything Farr has worked for is threatened. But instead of giving in, Farr decides to fight.
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Cast
- Dirk BogardeMelville Farr
- Sylvia SymsLaura Farr
- Dennis PriceCalloway
- Anthony NichollsLord Charles Fullbrook
- Peter CopleyPaul Mandrake
- Norman BirdHarold Doe
- Peter McEneryJack Barrett
- Donald ChurchillEddy Stone
- Derren NesbittSandy
- John BarrieInspector Harris
Recommendations
- 100
The Guardian
This gripping thriller, part of the BFI's Bogarde retrospective, daringly smashed through 1961's homosexual taboos, but has weathered best as a study of blackmail and paranoia. - 100
RogerEbert.com
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. - 91
Entertainment Weekly
While some may be put off by talk of ”abnormalities,” the inner struggle depicted so poignantly in Victim has not dated at all. - 90
Variety
This is telling, moving stuff. - 80
Time
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. - 80
Time Out
A brave British melodrama from 1961, one of this country's first explorations of gay life on screen. - 80
TV Guide Magazine
A liberal film on the subject of homosexuality rather than the radical film some considered it at the time, Victim still stands as an intelligent film attempting to address an important social issue. - 75
Chicago Reader
Victim, for all its compromises, offers a rich mosaic of minor characters, none of them particularly complex but each articulating some British attitude toward homosexuality and the law surrounding it.
