For its time, a brave, challenging early 60's British film which takes on the taboo subject of homosexuality (even more in society as a whole than just in movies - homosexuality was illegal, punishable by imprisonment until 1967).
The film tries hard, within the understandable constraints of its own time, to posit as many views as possible including the abhorrent anti-gay lobby and if ultimately, the conclusion fudges the issue, it's still a thought-provoking movie.
The plot is initially almost run-of-the-mill thriller, with an early urgency conveyed in the opening scenes where Peter McEnery's "Boy" character goes on the run from the pursuing police, but gradually as we learn about the underlying themes at play, the film then moves on to its major examination of contrasting characters.
Peopled by a top-class cast, including Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Sims and Denis Price and directed firmly and stylishly in the "kitchen-sink" monochromatic style of Early 60's British cinema, it's never less than watchable and often involving and indeed gripping.
Perhaps there are too many characters on either side of the fence, perhaps the simplistic, almost Agatha Christie type blackmail plot doesn't properly serve its subject and I'm still trying to work out the significance of the voyeur-cum-extortionist pair who gather in the same pub as the gay set. The ending, naturally, has compromise written all over it (Bogarde will suppress his homosexuality for a platonic marriage to his forgiving wife), but the very fact that the film shows that not all gay people of the time were prepared to accept their alienation from society, even if it meant exposing themselves to career - damaging publicity is laudable.
One hopes that a major movie like this played a small part in the abolition of a draconian and outdated law - it's hard to imagine it failing to do so and even though I can watch it today from the vantage point of a far more liberal society than 1961, one would think this would have been an even more explosive and controversial film in its own time.
The film tries hard, within the understandable constraints of its own time, to posit as many views as possible including the abhorrent anti-gay lobby and if ultimately, the conclusion fudges the issue, it's still a thought-provoking movie.
The plot is initially almost run-of-the-mill thriller, with an early urgency conveyed in the opening scenes where Peter McEnery's "Boy" character goes on the run from the pursuing police, but gradually as we learn about the underlying themes at play, the film then moves on to its major examination of contrasting characters.
Peopled by a top-class cast, including Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Sims and Denis Price and directed firmly and stylishly in the "kitchen-sink" monochromatic style of Early 60's British cinema, it's never less than watchable and often involving and indeed gripping.
Perhaps there are too many characters on either side of the fence, perhaps the simplistic, almost Agatha Christie type blackmail plot doesn't properly serve its subject and I'm still trying to work out the significance of the voyeur-cum-extortionist pair who gather in the same pub as the gay set. The ending, naturally, has compromise written all over it (Bogarde will suppress his homosexuality for a platonic marriage to his forgiving wife), but the very fact that the film shows that not all gay people of the time were prepared to accept their alienation from society, even if it meant exposing themselves to career - damaging publicity is laudable.
One hopes that a major movie like this played a small part in the abolition of a draconian and outdated law - it's hard to imagine it failing to do so and even though I can watch it today from the vantage point of a far more liberal society than 1961, one would think this would have been an even more explosive and controversial film in its own time.