Quiet compassion in Victim

Terence Davies, director of Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, The House of Mirth, A Quiet Passion chooses a sequence from Victim.

In Victim, Dirk Bogarde plays a closet homosexual barrister who risks both his career and marriage to break a blackmailing gang when his young friend kills himself rather than implicate him.

There is a small scene towards the end of the film when Bogarde calls for his clerk to join him. Bogarde shows him the photograph that has obvious implications. William (the clerk) looks at the photograph and says they must get the negative, having added, if the boy wasn’t crying there could be no basis for a criminal charge. As William goes to leave, Bogarde says that surely he must have one question, and William says that he’s worked for Bogarde for 10 years and that he has never doubted his integrity.

It is a small scene of compassion and loyalty – a compassion that is so moving because of its very reticence. It moved me to tears then. It moves me to tears now.

From The Guardian, 17th March 2021