There has been a wonderful plethora of LGBT films and TV programs to mark the 50th Anniversary of the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in the U.K. that have yet to make their way across the Pond. One has, however, and has just opened in the US and is currently playing the LGBT Film Festival circuit presumably as a precursor to its release on DVD/VOD globally.
Against The Law is part of the BBC’s Gay Brittania series and is a fictionalized account of the true story of journalist Peter Wildeblood (a superb Daniel Mays) who was put on trial along with his friends Lord Montagu (Michael Edel-Hunt) and Michael Pitt-Rivers (Josh Collins) charged with homosexual offenses. Wildeblood’s RAF corporal boyfriend Eddie (Richard Gadd) was pressured by the Authorities to give evidence against him, which brought down all three of the defendants who were convicted and jailed.
The year was 1954 and the police’s pursuit of these three public figures actually backfired and as there was such an outcry, the Government set up the famous Wolfenden Committee to investigate the whole subject of homosexuality. Sir John Wolfenden issued his report in 1957 recommending legalizing certain homosexual activities, but it took the Government another decade before they accepted his findings and actually passed the Sexual Offences Act. Incidentally, although Wolfenden pleaded for gay men to come forward to give evidence to his Committee, only one man did. Peter Wildeblood.
This excellent movie was directed by Fergus O’Brien from a script by Brian Fillis based on Peter Wildeblood’s book of the same name. O’Brien so perfectly captures the essence of a slowly recovering post-war London when the class-divide structure was still accepted as the norm. In fact, it is the resentment of just that empowers the working-class police to bring a member of the aristocracy down to show the new order of things.
O’Brien also mixes the drama with some real-time interviews of several elderly gay men who testify how nigh on impossible it was to be their true selves in their youth. Some spoke of the frisson of casual encounters keeping one step ahead of the Police, whilst others sadly accepted the pressures of family and society and resigned themselves to lonely lives totally on their own rather than risk being exposed.
The shocking realities of what is was like to be gay just 50 years ago makes for a horrifying memory for not just us living, for the most part, a very accepting life, but for those older members of the LGBT community that never ever recovered.
A ‘must see’ movie for everyone who fits in anywhere on the LGBTQ spectrum.
Labels: 2017, British, dramatized real-life, gay history
