The first movie to use the word "homosexual"

[Behind the Aegis]

“You knew of course he was a homosexual,” a police officer says to the up-and-coming star of the British legal scene, lawyer Melville Farr (Dirk Bogarde).

The officer refers to Jack Barrett (Peter McEnery), a young man who we’ve seen constantly trying to get in touch with Farr, only to be ignored repeatedly. Farr isn’t surprised by the revelation that Barrett is gay, in fact, he tells the officer he suspected as much. He is astonished to learn that Barrett has hung himself in his prison cell, which spurs Farr on a journey destined to change his life forever.

The line is an innocuous one—a mere statement of fact. In truth, it was an extremely groundbreaking moment in cinema history, and the first utterance of the word “homosexual” in an English-language film.

Victim, directed by Basil Dearden and released in the UK in 1961, was made at a time when having homosexual characters or even mentioning homosexuality at all, was against the law. In fact, homosexuality wasn’t even decriminalized until 1967, six years after the film was released.

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