Blunt,Dearden,Wiseman

One should remember that for Blunt’s generation of homosexual men, friends in innumerable ways provided a support network in a hostile world and defended the individual against the State.

--Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt, his lives (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2001).

I was in graduate school in art history in 1979 when it was revealed that Anthony Blunt was the fourth spy in the Cambridge group of spies that included Philby, Burgess and MacClean.  How could this be, this expert on one of my favorite painters, Nicolas Poussin?  Miranda Carter does an excellent job in her attempt to answer a basically unanswerable question, detailing Blunt’s life and work within the British class system, against which he felt he was rebelling as he passed secrets to the Soviet Union when he worked for military intelligence during and after WW II.  Later, when I worked at "The Nation" I heard James Weinstein, editor of "In These Times", say that he thought the Rosenbergs were guilty and if he had had the chance he, too, would have passed on secrets in the cause of peace.

The importance of Blunt’s  homosexuality in his actions became clear when I recently watched Basil Dearden’s film Victim, from 1961.  This was a shocking film in its time, with the first use of “homosexual” in an English-language film, and portrays a scheme to blackmail homosexuals, who would rather pay than be exposed and possibly go to prison.  “I can’t help the way I am; nature’s played me a dirty trick,” says one blackmail victim.  Homosexuality was a crime in England until 1967, though of course it was very selectively enforced, mostly against the lower classes and not against actors, such as Dirk Bogarde, who starred in Victim.  Bogarde plays a barrister who had suppressed his own homosexuality for the sake of a wife and a career, the film emphasizing the sexual complexity of us all.  The film is crisply photographed in black-and-white (by Otto Heller) and shot on London locations that emphasize the diversity of the city.  In England laws against homosexuality were eliminated in 1967, though they still exist in some states in the U.S.,  essentially no longer enforced since the Supreme Court in 2003 struck down a Texas law against sodomy.

Frederick Wiseman’s recent documentary In Jackson Heights emphasizes diversity.  The different ethnic groups in this Queens neighborhood tend to stay separate when it comes to food, entertainment and religious worship but do come together to solve problems with landlords, police and traffic safety.  There are a fair number of support groups for the LGBT community and Wiseman shows their meetings  as well as those of businessmen struggling to keep their businesses going in the face of encroaching gentrification.  Wiseman does not impose narration on his documentaries and does not even identify individuals.  This is not without its own problems but does keep a viewer involved and paying attention to the details of the people and groups of immigrants who are providing a vivid presence through their hard work and involvement in the community.