Editing Victim (1961 film) (section)

===Critical reception===
British reviews of the film praised Bogarde's performance as his best and praised his courage in taking on the role. A London magazine called it "the most startlingly outspoken film Britain has ever produced".<ref name=watts/> An anonymous reviewer in ''[[The Times]]'' commented that "''Victim'' may not say a great deal about"<!-- The two points before "but" are from earlier in the article, the original "may not say a great deal about this difficult problem, but" gives a misleading impression of the reviews content. --> 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".<ref>{{cite news|url=https://login.thetimes.com/?gotoUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetimes.com%2Farchive%2Farticle%2F1961-08-30%2F11%2F7.html|title=Intelligent Film on Homosexuality|work=The Times|date=30 August 1961|access-date=25 July 2017|page=11}}</ref> However, Terence Kelly of ''[[Sight and Sound]]'' saw problems with the film, and wrote that ''Victim'' contains "a tour of the more respectable parts of the London homosexual underworld, with glimpses of the ways in which different men cope with or are destroyed by their abnormality", but he did comment that "the film unequivocally condemns the way" blackmail "is encouraged by the present state of the law".<ref>{{cite web|last=Kelly|first=Terence|url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/victim-1961-dirk-bogarde-landmark-thriller|title=''Victim'' archive review: Dirk Bogarde fronts a courageous, landmark thriller|work=Sight and Sound|date=Autumn 1961|access-date=25 July 2017}}</ref>

[[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". He found the script "routine" and "shoddily constructed" as drama, but successful as a political argument:<ref name="crowther">{{cite news|last1=Crowther|first1=Bosley|title='Victim' Arrives: Dirk Bogarde Stars in Drama of Blackmail|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807EFD81F3DEF3BBC4E53DFB4668389679EDE|access-date=25 April 2016|work=The New York Times|date=6 February 1962| quote=...which came to the Forum and the Murray Hill yesterday}}</ref>
{{Blockquote|[A]s a frank and deliberate exposition of the well-known presence and plight of the tacit homosexual in modern society it is certainly unprecedented and intellectually bold. It makes no bones about the existence of the problem and about using the familiar colloquial terms. The very fact that homosexuality as a condition is presented honestly and unsensationally, with due regard for the dilemma and the pathos, makes this an extraordinary film.}}
Crowther qualified his praise of Bogarde's acting, saying that "Dirk Bogarde does a strong, forceful, forthright job, with perhaps a little too much melancholy and distress in his attitude, now and again", and summed up his mixed view with the statement: "While the subject is disagreeable, it is not handled distastefully. And while the drama is not exciting, it has a definite intellectual appeal."<ref name=crowther/>

Chris Waters has argued that "''Victim'' took for granted that homosexuality was a social problem that needed to be explored calmly and dispassionately" as a result of the "wake of the social dislocations associated with the war and the various anxieties to which they gave rise".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Waters|first=Chris|date=July 2012|title=The Homosexual as a Social Being in Britain, 1945 -1968|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265600|journal=Journal of British Studies|volume=51|issue=3|pages=685–710|doi=10.1086/665524|jstor=23265600|s2cid=145220754 }}</ref> He elaborated on this further by referring to Kenneth Soddy, a physician in the Department of Psychological Medicine at University College London Hospital, who wrote in 1954 that, while homosexuality itself did not trouble the community, its "social disturbance" during the war caused "variations in social and sexual practices which engenders attacks of acute public anxiety."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Soddy|first=Kenneth|date=11 September 1954|title=Homosexuality|journal=Lancet|volume=264|issue=6837|pages=541–546|doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(54)90326-8|pmid=13193069}}</ref> As such, Waters argues that the film portrays homosexuality in a sensationalised way that would have deliberately drawn public attention to the issue.

Before the film was released in the US, a news report in ''[[The New York Times]]'' described it as a political work, saying: "the movie is a dramatized condemnation, based on the [[Wolfenden Report]], of Britain's laws on homosexuality."<ref name="denied" />

In relation to a BFI Southbank retrospective screening season of Bogarde's films, [[Peter Bradshaw]] argued that "it could be that ''Victim'' may come to be valued, 50 years on, not as a study of homosexuality, but of blackmail and paranoia." He pointed out that Farr never engages in homosexual acts, but, rather, "appears" to have a "passionate, unconsummated infatuation with a young man at university" and then, later, a liaison with a "young building-site worker", both unconsummated arrangements to prove his interest. Bradshaw wrote that Bogarde's lighting is more haunting than necessary in the confrontation scenes with his wife, and noticed similarities to the work of [[Patrick Hamilton (writer)|Patrick Hamilton]], especially "the seedy, nasty world of pubs and drinking holes around ... London's West End", concluding his review with the statement: "It is perhaps in its evocation of the strange, occult world of blackmail, conspiracy and shame, and the seediness of a certain type of London, that ''Victim'' holds up best."<ref>{{Cite web|date=2011-08-08|title=Dirk Bogarde's Victim shines a light on London's shadowy past|url=http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/aug/08/dirk-bogarde-victim-homosexual-taboos|access-date=2020-12-09|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref>

''Victim'' became a highly [[sociology|sociologically]] significant film, and many believe it played an influential role in liberalising attitudes and the laws in Britain regarding homosexuality.<ref name="Greenfield2001">{{citation | last1=Greenfield | first1=Steve | year=2001 | title=Film and the Law | last2=Osborn | first2=Guy | last3=Robson | first3=Peter | publisher=Routledge | isbn=978-1-85941-639-6  | page=118 }}</ref> Alan Burton conducted a 2010 study of "various documents relating to the [[Wolfenden Report]], public opinion, censorship, and the production and reception of ''Victim''," and found that the film, which "has attracted much criticism and debate, largely in terms of its liberal prescriptions and its 'timid' handling of a controversial theme", had "significant impact on gay men who struggled with their identity and subjectivity at a time when their sexuality was potentially illegal".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Burton|first=Alan|date=2010|title=Victim (1961): Text and Context|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26430917|journal=AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik|volume=35|issue=1 |pages=75–100|jstor=26430917}}</ref>