The British Board of Film Censors, which liked to discuss synopses before production, sent [a note] to Victim’s makers. It’s clear that the censors were anxious to a craven degree that the film shouldn’t shock, or create any trouble for Lord Morrison, the incoming president of the BBFC, who would have to defend it. John Trevelyan, its secretary, wrote to the film’s producer that, while ‘intelligent people’ regard homosexuality ‘with sympathy and compassion’, to the great majority of cinemagoers it is ‘shocking, distasteful and disgusting’. As elsewhere in [discussions at the time], you hear a man hoping to be taken for one of the ‘intelligent’ lot while suggesting, in the force of his language, his covert concurrence with the majority view, or at least a fear of being seen to dissent from it.
Trevelyan was alarmed that the film outline gave an impression of a ‘world peopled with no one but “queers”’. ‘The less we have of groups of “queers” in bars and clubs and elsewhere the better’: ‘keep the homosexual relationships as far as possible in the background.’ When Janet Green submitted her script these objections were amplified: ‘Frankly we would not want this amount of emphasis on homosexual practices nor the somewhat frank dialogue about it that is in the present script.’ The censors certainly got their way there, as no trace of either thing survives in the finished film. It’s as if, in order to deal with the subject at all, the film has to keep it entirely out of view. Parker gives extracts from a hostile reader’s report on a revised script: ‘the only character who has any real impact is the Sandy Youth.’ This is the sinister, motorcycle-riding blackmailer, clearly himself queer, who was played by Derren Nesbitt. ‘Goodness knows what encouragement this film may give to potential blackmailers of the Sandy Youth type.’ [Here] is the immobilising paradox that the film dramatises[:] the law not only makes queers criminals but stimulates the committing of further crimes against them. It’s cheering, therefore, to [learn] that the very gloom of Victim had a positive effect on public opinion, stirring sympathy and indignation – Lord Arran believed the film to be responsible for a critical swing from 48 to 63 per cent in favour of decriminalisation.
— Alan Hollinghurst (London Review of Books)
Synopsis: A web of blackmail and murder attracts the attention of a barrister with a seemingly idyllic life, threatening to derail his career on the path of success.