Welcome to Screen Gems, our weekend dive into queer and queer-adjacent titles of the past that deserve a watch or a re-watch.Few contemporary audiences have even heard of this 1961 British thriller–the first movie ever to invoke use of the term “homosexual.” The great Dirk Bogarde (who was gay in real life) stars as Melville Farr, a successful lawyer living in London with his wife, Laura (Sylvia Syms)…and a closeted gay man.
When Boy, his former boyfriend (Peter McEnery), approaches him for money, Melville expresses the requisite skepticism. Then he learns of a much larger blackmail plot over a picture of he and Boy in an intimate embrace.