Victim review

Ground-breaking early '60s British thriller, which set out to challenge the laws which criminalised homosexuality. Dirk Bogarde plays the closeted middle-aged barrister who risks his marriage and reputation by pursuing the blackmailers who are extorting money from gay men in London. As a plea for tolerance and sympathy towards what the script calls `inverts', the melodramatic Victim has obviously dated. But the intensity of Bogarde's performance, not least where he confesses to wife Sylvia Syms his homosexual desires, transcends the film's well-intentioned cautiousness.