18. Victim (1961)
It is hard in these sexually liberated times to imagine how uptight people were about homosexuality in as late as the 1960s. Homosexuality was only legalised in Britain in 1967, before that, gay people were forced into living secret lives and adopting an underground lifestyle. Victim, in 1961, was the first film to take the bull by the horns and tackle the subject of homosexuality in a positive light. Dirk Bogarde plays Melville Farr, a successful London barrister. He finds himself target of an elaborate blackmailing racket that is targeting homosexuals. He refuses to give in to them. The most controversial moment in the film comes when the blackmailers paint 'Farr is Queer' on his garage door. For audiences to see the word queer so blatantly on the cinema screen, it must have been very shocking - they knew fine rightly what it was alluding to. For a film to openly acknowledge homosexuality in the early 1960s was a very brave and controversial move indeed.