Why it’s time to revis­it this land­mark British LGBTQ+ drama

A man stands on the edge of a dance floor, his face hard to read. Elec­tron­ic dance music and haze fill the space and bod­ies shim­my and twist around him, but the man is very much alone. There are many of these scenes in Ron Peck’s 1978 dra­ma, Nighthawks, often cit­ed as Britain’s first overt­ly gay film. The man is Jim, played by Ken Robert­son in his only major film role.

Queer his­to­ry often brings to mind pas­sion­ate fights for jus­tice, colour­ful Pride parades and a fierce deter­mi­na­tion for vis­i­bil­i­ty, but this ver­sion of his­to­ry feels far removed from Nighthawks’ world. Although gay sex had been legalised a decade ear­li­er, British soci­ety had lit­tle tol­er­ance for LGBTQ+ lives in the 1970s. As one char­ac­ter puts it, “[We’re] not even human as far as they’re con­cerned.” Vil­i­fied by the gov­ern­ment and thought to be liv­ing out deviant lifestyles at the fringes of soci­ety, Peck want­ed to show the truth: that gay men are not out­liers of British life, but inte­grat­ed with­in all facets of soci­ety, liv­ing out painful­ly banal lives just like every­one else in ​’70s London.

It is there­fore cru­cial that Jim isn’t an activist or rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Instead, he’s a geog­ra­phy teacher, seem­ing­ly con­tent in his dis­ci­plined life which is divid­ed between two worlds. By day he teach­es and socialis­es with friends; by night he loi­ters around gay clubs hop­ing to spark a sex­u­al con­nec­tion with some­one. Even his one-night stands are repet­i­tive: same con­ver­sa­tion (“Where are you from? When did you move to Lon­don? Do your flat­mates know you’re gay?”); the same offer to dri­ve his com­pan­ion home in the morn­ing and the same non-com­mit­tal vague­ness to stay in touch.

The rep­e­ti­tion of Nighthawks’ struc­ture is often per­ceived as a flaw in the film – as is the dull­ness of Jim’s life – but Peck isn’t inter­est­ed in the kind of melo­dra­mat­ic tragedy that for a long peri­od under­pinned queer cin­e­ma. Rather, this is a can­did por­trait of gay life pre-AIDS, one which shows the real­i­ty of liv­ing in a hos­tile soci­ety. For Jim, the small, dingy club he fre­quents is a sanc­tu­ary. A place where he can be himself.

You might not notice it at first (in the club scenes, Jim keeps to the walls, eyes dart­ing around the dance floor), but while phys­i­cal­ly he appears as restrained as in his clos­et­ed day-to-day life, he is emo­tion­al­ly lib­er­at­ed here. In one sequence, Peck push­es the cam­era in, mov­ing clos­er and clos­er to Robertson’s face until it fills the screen. A mix­ture of emo­tions are there: the lone­li­ness of liv­ing between two worlds, the des­per­a­tion of his search to make a con­nec­tion and the fear of not find­ing some­one to go home with.

Peck was adamant that his pro­tag­o­nist should be an every­man, not some­one liv­ing their life in the mar­gins. Near the end of the film, Jim’s two lives final­ly bleed into each oth­er and he’s con­front­ed by his stu­dents, who ask him blunt­ly, ​“Are you bent? Are you queer?” Peck puts us in Jim’s shoes as he responds to the bar­rage of ques­tions patient­ly and com­pas­sion­ate­ly. Instead of rein­forc­ing a ​‘them against us’ men­tal­i­ty, Jim has a frank con­ver­sa­tion about his sex­u­al­i­ty and life. It’s the first time we real­ly see him open up and trust oth­er people.

Although Nighthawks left an impres­sion on a whole gen­er­a­tion of LGBTQ+ peo­ple, its wider rep­u­ta­tion has suf­fered due to the mis­con­cep­tion that it is a dull film about a dull man. Watch­ing it in 2020, how­ev­er, a life­time removed from its set­ting, the film’s mes­sage still res­onates thanks to Robertson’s per­for­mance. The lone­li­ness of liv­ing two lives, his aching search for com­pan­ion­ship and uncer­tain­ty about who he can trust – these are feel­ings that every LGBTQ+ per­son will be able to relate to.

Nighthawks is cur­rent­ly avail­able to stream on BFI Player.