[8] An anonymous reviewer in The Times commented that "Victim may not say a great deal about" the related issues of the nature of 'love' and gay men's "genuine feeling" for each other, "but what it does say is reasoned and just; and it does invite a compassionate consideration of this particular form of human bondage". [20], The film was not a major hit, but it was popular, and by 1971, it had earned an estimated profit of £51,762. In an area rife with rejuvenation, not all of the buildings built on the McAlpine development site featured in the film still stand today. Farr rebuffs the approach, thinking Barrett wants to blackmail him about their relationship. He thought the script "routine" and "shoddily constructed" as drama but successful as a political argument:[3]. He said Victim was "a story not of glands but of love. The hero of the film is a man who has never given way to his homosexual impulses; he has fought them–that's part of his heroism.
Director: Basil Dearden. Third, the film implies that homosexuality is a choice, which "is a dangerous idea to put into the minds of adolescents who see the film". My first stop in Soho was Henry’s barbers. [19], Bosley Crowther wrote that the film "appears more substantial and impressive than its dramatic content justifies" because "it deals with a subject that heretofore has been studiously shied away from or but cautiously hinted at on the commercial screen". | It was, in its time, all three."[6]. He seems not to have hesitated to accept the role of Farr, a married lawyer with a homosexual past that he has not quite put behind him. "[7] He wrote years later in his autobiography that his father had suggested he do The Mayor of Casterbridge, "But I did Victim instead, ... playing the barrister with the loving wife, a loyal housekeeper, devoted secretary and the Secret Passion. Here Melville walks through the sun-dappled grounds that provide the resting place of William Hogarth. In the heat I could begin to understand the role that such formal surroundings would have played in shaping Melville’s frame of mind. A London magazine called it "the most startlingly outspoken film Britain has ever produced".
The fact that willing participants in consensual homosexual acts could be prosecuted made them vulnerable to entrapment, and the criminalisation of homosexuality was known as the "blackmailer's charter". In the United States, the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code Administration, the film industry's self-censorship board that enforced the guidelines established by the Motion Picture Production Code, denied Victim its seal of approval.