Queen's Counsel

Basil Dearden’s Victim (1961) is a British film noir blackmail thriller based on the same criminal offense that sent Oscar Wilde to Reading Gaol in 1895.

The drama centers on Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde), a prominent barrister with a gay past who knows he risks his marriage and career if he resolves to bring down a blackmail ring targeting gay men in pre-Beatle London. This write-up contains no spoilers.

Detective Inspector Harris (John Barrie) and Bridie (John Cairney) in Victim (1961).

Detective Inspector Harris (John Barrie) connects incidents involving men of different social backgrounds with blackmailers preying on homosexuals. He is less interested in what adults do amongst themselves in private than in preventing and solving crimes. A law that sends homosexuals to prison practically ‘charters’ blackmailers because it makes it nearly impossible for ‘the unfortunate devils’ to report them to police, he says.
 
This film, the first in Britain to use the word ‘homosexual’, broke ground in 1961 because at that time the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 criminalized homosexual activity between males. This was the same law used to prosecute Oscar Wilde nearly 70 years before. Sex between consenting males aged 21 and older was legalized only six years later by the Sexual Offences Act 1967 (homosexuals would not gain parity with heterosexuals under the law until 2000). The story is set in London’s then-underground gay community; the pub scenes were shot in The Salisbury, once a gay hangout near Leicester Square in London’s theatre district.

Jack ‘Boy’ Barrett (Peter McEnery) and Eddy Stone (Donald Churchill) in Victim (1961).

The action opens with Jack ‘Boy’ Barrett (Peter McEnery) on the run from police. His mate Eddy Stone (Donald Churchill) recovers a package of material for him steps ahead of them. Barrett then desperately tracks down contacts to help him get out of London and flee the country.

Sylvia Syms and Dirk Bogarde as Mr. and Mrs. Melville Farr in Victim (1961).

Blackmailers pressure Barrett. But they hook a bigger fish in Farr, a high profile barrister and newly appointed Queen’s Counsel (QC), whose wife Laura (Sylvia Syms) is the daughter of a prominent judge. Laura knows of Farr’s gay past: he made a commitment to her not to continue it. Farr’s professional skill and nerve also make him a potentially formidable adversary to criminals.

The QC system injected the British class system into the legal profession by the crown granting special privileges to selected barristers which provided that they get the best cases and could charge higher fees. QCs’ black silk gowns distinguish them from other lawyers, whence the term ‘taking silk’ when they are appointed as ‘Silks’. In more recent times, QC appointments are less exclusive and about status more than privilege.

Taking silk in the 1960s would have been a bigger deal than it is now; Farr’s likely next step would have been a judgeship. But being outed as gay at a time when sex between men was a criminal offense would have ended his legal career.

Derren Nesbitt’s Sandy leans on Henry the Comb (Charles Lloyd Pack) in Victim (1961).

Detective Inspector Harris’s ‘unfortunate devils’ have no incentive to work with the police. Harris suspects that Farr may have a closer connection with them than he lets on. But Farr has the same problem as Harris in finding a victim to come forward. Farr also has his wife to consider. His gay past and details about his present are ambiguous; but Laura, a strong, independent character in her own right, is more to Farr than just a ‘beard’ or a career gambit. Bogarde and Syms’s scenes together make these characters real and their story poignant. Farr knows he puts his marriage and career on the line if he decides to take on the blackmailers.

Fraudsters PH (Hilton Edwards) and Mickey (David Evans) in Victim (1961).

There are many smaller roles that make this film fun to watch, such as Dennis Price (Kind Hearts and Coronets) as the actor ‘Tiny’ Calloway; the fraudster team PH and Mickey (Hilton Edwards and David Evans), Henry the Comb (Charles Lloyd Pack), Madge (Mavis Villiers) and the barman (Frank Pettit) among Salisbury regulars; and bookshop owner Harold Doe (Norman Bird) and his prickly assistant Miss Benham (Margaret Diamond). Career movie bad guy Derren Nesbitt is ideal as the smirking young blackmailer Sandy.

Derren Nesbitt’s smirking blackmailer Sandy in Victim (1961).

And screenwriters Janet Green and John McCormick give Detective Inspector Harris a reliable foil in his Scots assistant Bridie (John Cairney) who scratches his head over what strikes him as gay men’s patent ‘abnormality’.

Harris replies that ‘if the law punished every abnormality, we’d be kept very busy.’

‘Even so, sir, this law was made for a very good reason. If this law were changed, other weaknesses would follow.’

‘I can see you’re a true Puritan, Bridie.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with that, sir.’

‘Well now, there was a time when that was against the law, you know,’ Harris said. (Puritans forced to flee England were among the first settlers of England’s North American colonies.)

Sylvia Syms and Dirk Bogarde as Mr. and Mrs. Melville Farr in Victim (1961).

Victim is included in the four-DVD Criterion Eclipse collection Basil Dearden’s London Underground with Sapphire (1959), The League of Gentlemen (1960) and All Night Long (1962).

Victim 1961 U.K. (100 minutes) Allied Film Makers. Directed by Basil Dearden; screenplay by Janet Green and John McCormick; cinematography by Otto Heller; edited by John D. Guthridge; music by Philip Green; art direction by Alex Vetchinsky; produced by Michael Relph.