“I wanted him!” With these words, a gripping landmark in gay cinema was born.
Dirk Bogarde’s closeted, married lawyer Melville Farr is drawn into exposing a terrifying blackmail ring when an admirer commits suicide rather than implicate him.
Supporting the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee, director Basil Dearden, producer Michael Relph and screenwriter Janet Green denounced the institutionalised homophobia gay men of all classes faced, and cleverly packaged the politics within an accessible crime-thriller. Victim, and Bogarde’s courageous appearance in it, helped...
