International A PEEK AT VICTIM (1 Viewer)

A hugely important film and a great one, beautifully directed by the underrated Basil Dearden and brave performances by Dirk Bogarde, Dennis Price and others. When this film was made in 1961 it was a true envelope pusher - it was the first film to use the word "homosexual" and to really confront the stupid law in Britain at that time that put homosexuals in jail. This film was the beginning of the downfall of that law, which was finally removed six years later. Considering that several prominent members of the cast WERE homosexual shows you just how brave they were to make the film. The transfer looks great - beautiful grays, blacks and whites. If you've never seen this historic film you should give it a chance - it masquerades as a thriller and blackmail picture, so it's never like a polemic - but the way in which it deals with its issues is honest and forthright.

haineshisway said:

The transfer looks great - beautiful grays, blacks and whites.

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Thank you for that. I've been dithering about buying this but you've helped make up my mind.

I knew about Dirk Bogarde but I wasn't aware about others in the cast. I once saw Dirk Bogarde talking on TV, and he said this film killed his career as a matinee idol, not because he played a homosexual but because he played a middle-aged man.

Yes, very brave of Mr Bogarde, esp. as it seems he was gay himself. He did pay a price, I read somewhere that he couldn't get another part after this, & his career was saved by Alec Guinness insisting that he was cast in Damn The Defiant!

In fact the very first film in which the "homosexual" word is uttered is in Ed Wood's sublime Glen or Glenda. Timothy Farrell, as the "Psychiatrist" talks to the camera commenting on the sad life of the Transvestite suicide and says "Glen is not a homosexual, he is a transvestite..." and with that line reading Ed initiates the first movie to raise gender politics into the public arena. All those many many years ago. The 50s was clearly a vile decade for gay people, witch hunts, blackmail, persecution, imprisonment, crooked police stings, social opprobrium in the US, UK and Oz. You had to be tough to survive. I was lucky to come out as a teen in the 60s when life was getting more real.Agree about Dearden, a near major Brit director if not quite in the class of Robert Hamer and Mackendrick at Ealing. His Mind Benders and other 50s pictures are really sharp, action packed pieces of social commentary, relatively unfettered by censorhip in Britain then, unlike their American counterparts. Bogarde is terrific in all his pictures for Dearden.

A hugely important film and a great one, beautifully directed by the underrated Basil Dearden and brave performances by Dirk Bogarde, Dennis Price and others. When this film was made in 1961 it was a true envelope pusher - it was the first film to use the word "homosexual" and to really confront the stupid law in Britain at that time that put homosexuals in jail. This film was the beginning of the downfall of that law, which was finally removed six years later. Considering that several prominent members of the cast WERE homosexual shows you just how brave they were to make the film. The transfer looks great - beautiful grays, blacks and whites. If you've never seen this historic film you should give it a chance - it masquerades as a thriller and blackmail picture, so it's never like a polemic - but the way in which it deals with its issues is honest and forthright.

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Well, we can say "major" film to use that word

Is there a chance Criterion will put this out on Blu-ray? They already have it on iTunes in HD.

Mark-P said:

Is there a chance Criterion will put this out on Blu-ray? They already have it on iTunes in HD.

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Simply, no. Ealing is now in the claws of Studio Canal.
Network and other Region B houses are far more likely to be doing this stuff.

Billy Batson said:

Yes, very brave of Mr Bogarde, esp. as it seems he was gay himself. He did pay a price, I read somewhere that he couldn't get another part after this, & his career was saved by Alec Guinness insisting that he was cast in Damn The Defiant!

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That rumour is contradicted by Dirk Bogarde in an interview he gave before Victim was released. This interview is one of the extras on this disc. Bogarde says he was doing a villainous role opposite Alec Guinness in his next film.

I watched this Blu-ray disc last night. An excellent disc of an excellent film.

Quite apart from its historic significance and ground-breaking subject matter, Victim works well as a straight forward thriller. There is an ingenious red-herring too.

david hare said:

Simply, no. Ealing is now in the claws of Studio Canal.
Network and other Region B houses are far more likely to be doing this stuff.

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Well Criterion has some sort of rights to it as they are the company distributing the iTunes file.

I may have the studio wrong here. Allied was the original production company and Dearden made quite a few pictures there with producer Michael Relph.So I think I can safely say I was wrong about Ealing (thus Studio Canal, this ain't Ealing by a stretch, and indeed there's an Eclipse boxset of other Dearden "Social issue" films which is well worth while. So there's a sporting chance for Criterion I suppose.

I now have much more hope that Criterion may put this out on Blu-ray. Criterion just announced that Watership Down is coming to Blu-ray and it had been released exclusively to iTunes earlier this year. This gives me hope for all the other Criterion titles that are currently only on iTunes in HD: titles such as Tiger Bay, and David Lean's Oliver Twist.