In 1960, Dirk Bogarde was at the height of his popularity in Britain. He was young and good-looking in a delicate sort of way -- any mother's prospective son-in-law. He had what Variety called "a firm feminine following." But Bogarde himself was unhappy with his matinee-idol image and with the films he was being offered by Rank -- adventures, war dramas, and comedies, notably the "Doctor in the House" series. Many years later, he described himself as "the Dorothy Lamour of Pinewood Studios."

Bogarde seemed all set to make a film of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge when director Basil Dearden sent him a controversial script. "I did Victim instead," Bogarde later wrote in his memoirs, "and played the barrister with the loving wife and the Secret Passion. It was the wisest decision I ever made in my cinematic life. It is extraordinary that this modest film could ever have been considered courageous, daring, or dangerous to make. It was, in its time, all three."

Victim was an original screenplay by John McCormick and Janet Green. Like the 1959 Sapphire, a story of racial prejudice that Green had written for Dearden and his regular producer, Michael Relph, Victim was a social-problem picture masquerading as a thriller.

Until Victim, homosexuality was a taboo subject for the mainstream cinemas of Britain and America. Indeed, homosexuality was a criminal offense in Britain, punishable by a long prison sentence with hard labor. But in 1957 the Wolfenden Report advocated a liberalization of the law and although Wolfendenıs recommendations were not endorsed by Parliament until 1967, the critical success of Victim (as well as A Taste of Honey and The Leather Boys) can be said to have played a part in the public's tolerance if not acceptance of "queers," as they are called in the film.

The story is simple: A rent boy (Peter McEnery) is arrested and commits suicide in jail. It turns out that he has been blackmailed and that his many lovers, including the respected and respectably married barrister (Bogarde), fear they will be targeted as well. Bogarde has to choose between going to the police or hunting down the extortionists himself. Then the web of blackmail is found to extend to the innermost sanctums of British society, including the House of Lords.

The strategy of the picture is to avoid the physical aspect of homosexuality (Bogarde simply says "I wanted him") and to focus instead on the barrister's emotional vulnerability and sense of social exclusion, even though outwardly he is a member of the Establishment. That is the trick the picture pulls: By offering characters and, crucially, actors familiar to moviegoers, this "Secret Passion," as Bogarde called it, appears quite natural. While the picture diffuses prejudice and advocates tolerance in a very schematic way, it also generates considerable tension as Bogarde's crisis means "outing" himself and sacrificing his marriage.

In Britain, Victim opened on 31 August 1961 with an "X" certificate, which prevented anyone under the age of 16 from seeing it. In America, the film was initially refused a Seal of Approval by the Production Code, delaying its release and increasing its box-office appeal. Unquestionably one of the key British films of the 1960s, it remains a significant milestone, ably directed by Dearden and sensitively performed by Bogarde and Sylvia Syms as his unfortunate wife. While the critics admired the film, Bogarde's traditional audience -- the "Aunt Ednas" as they were called -- shunned it. But Bogarde never looked back -- The Servant followed two years later.

-- Adrian Turner
Adrian Turner, a British film journalist and critic, has just published a biography of screenwriter Robert Bolt.

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