Victim: Dirk Bogarde helps the UK turn a corner on LGBT+ rights

This evening wasn’t the first time I’ve watched Basil Dearden’s 1961 noirish suspense film Victim, but there was so much more that I ‘saw’ and appreciated on a second viewing.

Melville Farr is a successful London barrister, married – apparently happily – to Laura. But he is drawn into a scandal when Jack ‘Boy’ Barrett, a young man he had had a secret romantic relationship with (not consummated) is arrested for stealing from his employer and hangs himself in a police cell rather than risk naming Farr under interrogation.

It emerges that Barrett was one of the victims of a gang of blackmailers targeting gay men – the reason for the thefts.

Yet ironically, when he’d tried to contact Farr for help, the barrister had refused his calls, assuming that they were attempts at blackmail.

When Farr learns of Barrett’s suicide, he decides that, whatever the personal cost – and there will be a large one – he will ensure justice is served on the blackmailers.

As with any form of culture, film has the power to change minds and inform debate, but with a wider reach than, say, theatre, its potential power is increased.

The influence of Victim can hardly be overstated.

It was written by Janet Green and John McCormick, after the former had read the 1957 Wolfenden Report, which had recommended that “homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence”.

Green already had ‘form’ for screenplays about social issues: the 1959 film Sapphire dealt with racism in London toward West Indian immigrants. She’d also penned the excellent 1950 thriller (which sadly seems to have been almost forgotten) The Clouded Yellow, starring Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons.

Victim, however, was of a different order – explicitly proselytising against the law, not least on the basis that, as Wolfenden had stated, the law as it stood was a “blackmailer’s charter”. It was to be hugely influential in changing attitudes so that homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967.

The film faced problems with censors in the UK and US. Yet it is not remotely voyeuristic or sensationalistic. It is, however, clearly sympathetic to its gay characters – and it is equally important in another context, in that they come from more than one social class and transverse that in their relationships.

Sylvia Syms turns in a really fine performance as Laura. In an indication of how difficult the subject was, the role had been turned down by a number of actors. But Syms had worked on stage with John Gielgud – an experience that had enlightened her about the impact of the law at that time – while she had also known a family friend who had ended their own life after being accused of being gay.

Peter McEnery gives a great turn as the vulnerable ‘Boy’ Barrett. As does Denis Price as the – closeted bisexual? – theatre star Calloway.

But this ultimately belongs to Dirk Bogarde as Farr. Gay himself – but never out – he apparently leapt at the chance, after several other stars had turned the role down (including James Mason and Stewart Granger). It transformed him from a matinée idol who had played romantic, comedy and action leads, to an art-house, European and intellectual film star.

It is a searing performance. If you have only ever seen Bogarde in one of the Doctor films, alongside the likes of James Robertson Justice and Leslie Phillips, then this will be a revelation.

While remaining silent about his own personal life, it was not the only gay role Bogarde played. In Luchino Visconti‘s 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella, Death in Venice, he held centre stage again as the gay Gustav von Aschenbach.

Victim is not only a genuinely good film – it is also a very socially significant film. If you haven’t already, check it out.

 

A label-defying film that offers up abundant treats

If films deserved plaudits for defying labelling, then Bad Times at the El Royale, would be winning them by the bucketload. But as if to illustrate the degree to which some people really need a label, it has received a decidedly mixed reception from reviewers and viewers.

It’s 1969 and the setting is the fading hotel of the title, which bridges the state line between California and Nevada. Here, half a dozen strangers converge, all bearing secrets.

First come guests Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), struggling soul singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo), vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm) and hippie Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson), to be met by Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman), the hotel’s sole employee.

In the background of the eerily quiet reception area and lounge, news footage shows police investigating a Malibu murder spree.

As each guest locks themselves into their room for the night, what drama could possibly play out?

By the time the sixth protagonist, Chris Hemsworth’s cult leader, arrives in the final third of the film, there have been plenty of twists and turns – and there are plenty more to come.

One of the prime complaints about Drew Goddard’s film is the length – it rolls in at 141 minutes. But length is only a problem if you’re sat in the cinema feeling uninvolved and wondering how much longer it’s going to drag on.

This, on the other hand, is incredibly inventive and engrossing: scenes unfold to explain the backstories of the main characters – and then unfold again, told from another character’s perspective. The characters themselves are far from simplistic and it's pretty pointless trying to guess their stories.

There is violence, but it’s used sparingly although, when it happens, it is genuinely shocking, even if Goddard doesn’t indulge in masses of gore. He doesn’t need to. Frankly, it’s difficult to think of a film that ratchets the tension up to the level that this does.

And thinking about that, 24 hours later, I realise that the last time I sat in a cinema and saw such a gore-free yet violent film, that built tension in other ways, was The Silence of the Lambs. And that was 1991.

Here, among the many things to admire, there is a tracking shot in the first part of the film – no spoliers here, but if you see the movie itself, you’ll know the scene when it comes up – that is simply stunning.

There have been comments that the film as a whole is ‘sub-Tarantino’, but since it never pretends to be anything like a Tarantino film, this is simply illustrative of how desperate needily some people need to find and attach labels.

Part of that is about being able to understand what you’re seeing/have seen by categorising it.

The Other Half and I knew little about the film, having seen the trailer on TV (and then in the cinema) and concluding that it looked interesting, amusing and possibly a bit of a caper movie.

‘Psychological thriller’ probably describes it as a well as any label, yet looking back on it, you can’t help feeling that it’s something else. Not ‘something else besides’, but something else entirely. There are elements of Noir; it’s got a brilliant retro look, feel and sound; there are one or two funny moments, but … it doesn’t fit any obvious mould.

The performances are universally excellent. Yet even then, British actor Erivo, in her first film to be released (the first to be filmed, Widows, opens next month), stands out. To say she can act and she can sing is an understatement. And it’s really not stretching anything to think that she should be in the reckoning early next year come the Oscar nominations.

L-R: Jon Hamm, Lewis Pullman and Cynthia Erivo

Bridges is brilliant too – and so is Pullman, in only his second released film role. The latter’s performance is a revelation. For most of the film, we see him as pathetic. Only when we catch his backstory, late on, do we understand why he is what he is, and that he not pathetic.

This is a film where the characters are crafted so that we really care about them.

It's a film ‘about’ all sorts of things: there is social commentary, though very subtly. It’s about redemption – though not in a conventional way. It’s about hagiographies and reputations and political legacies – it’s about how the state protects (or otherwise) those things. And all of it is razor-sharp relevant.

To add – Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography is just another of the joys that this film has.

Bursting with ideas and subtle comments about contemporary America (and the rest of the world), Bad Times at the El Royale is a genre-buster. And if you’re going bust genres, then this is the way to do it.