Two films that have more in common than single words in their title. Both are criminal dramas, both directed by Basil Dearden and both use the format to address social issues.

Sapphire starts as a simple mystery. A body of a female student has been found in a park in London and the police must find the killer. Her boyfriend appears to have an alibi, he was out of town and his father backs up the story. The investigation is going nowhere until the victim’s brother shows up. Thew twist is that he is black, which in turn makes the victim, Sapphire, black as well, even if she doesn’t look it (the father is black, the mother white). The racial element adds several twists to the plot. Is the boyfriend the killer, angered by the discovery of Sapphire’s race? Is it another member of the family? Is it one of Sapphire’s former friends from the international club that she has abandoned once she noticed she would be accepted as white?

There are many moments that clumsily work these plot points. Black people have natural rhythm, it is accepted that landladies will discriminate against non-whites (‘they have to make a living), and there’s the casual acceptance that a black girl would natural want to pass for white if she could.

Nonetheless, considering it was made in 1959, this seems a brave effort at using a genre to get the audience to take a look at itself and see the danger of its own racism.

Victim similarly deals with a major social issue. Homosexual men are being blackmailed with the threat of exposure. One is arrested for stealing cash from his employer, but hangs himself in custody rather than confess why he did it (he needed the money to pay off the blackmailer, but equally he is trying to protect a former lover). One of the victims, a high flying lawyer, decides he wants to do something, and tries to persuade other victims to fight back. However, either no-one is prepared to go public or they are intimated into silence. Ultimately he decides to effectively give up his career by going to the police himself.

This is a powerful film in many ways. The tension is kept up throughout as you try to work out who the blackmailer is. At the same time, and more importantly, it is an exposure of the ridiculousness of the anti-homosexual laws that were in force at the time, ‘a blackmailer’s charter,’ as one character describes it. Victim is a simple call for the right for adults to sleep with whom they want without fear of arrest and ridicule. The lead performance from Dirk Bogarde is perhaps given extra strength from being himself a closeted homosexual all his life.