Enigma (2001 film)

Enigma is a 2001 film set in World War II. It stars Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet and is based on a novel of the same title by Robert Harris.

Plot

With the war at its height in March of 1943, the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, England, have a problem — the Nazi U-boats have improved the security of their Enigma machine ciphers, leading to a blackout in naval signals intelligence; this could spell disaster in the critical Battle of the Atlantic, on whose outcome Britain's survival depends. The British cryptanalysts have cracked the cipher before, and they need to do it again. Fortunately, British authorities have enlisted a brilliant young mathematician named Tom Jericho (played by Dougray Scott) to help with the effort. Unfortunately, the possibility of a spy within the British code-breakers' ranks looms and Tom's love, Claire (Saffron Burrows), has disappeared. To solve the mysteries, Tom recruits Claire's roommate Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet). In investigating Claire's personal life, the pair discovers personal and international betrayals. [1] A fictional story, it links the breaking of the Enigma code and betrayal over the Katyn massacre

Main cast

• Dougray Scott - Tom Jericho
• Kate Winslet - Hester Wallace
• Saffron Burrows - Claire Romilly
• Jeremy Northam - Mr. Wigram
• Nikolaj Coster Waldau - Jozef 'Puck' Pukowski
• Tom Hollander - Logie
• Donald Sumpter - Leveret
• Matthew Macfadyen - Cave
• Corin Redgrave - Admiral Trowbridge
• Nicholas Rowe - Villiers
• Edward Hardwicke - Heaviside

Criticism as revisionism

The film, and by association the book, have attracted criticism for their portrayal of the Polish role in Enigma decryption. Critics argue that, in the film the fictitious traitor turns out to be Polish, while only slight mention is made of the contributions of pre-war Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologists to Allied Enigma-decryption efforts, and that, historically, the only known traitor active at Bletchley Park, was British spy John Cairncross, who passed crucial secrets to the Soviet Union.

There is also criticism of the character of Jericho, who appears to be a sanitized version of Alan Turing, a key figure at the real Bletchley Park in both the cracking of Enigma and the development of the digital computer. Turing, who was prosecuted for homosexual acts, lost his security clearance and ultimately committed suicide with an apple laced with cyanide. Some feel that the fictional depiction of Jericho is another example of revisionist history on the part of Hollywood and his depiction as heterosexual is an insult to the memory and the suffering of the real Turing.

Miscellaneous facts

• During the premier of the film Dougray Scott left fifteen minutes into the film to watch a Scottish Premier League football match between Rangers and his favourite team, Hibernian F.C., in a local pub.^{[citation needed]}
• When Tom Jericho is tapping on the desk with a pencil in the film, he is spelling out "Claire" in Morse code.
• When Hester Wallace decodes the long list of Polish names the camera zooms in on the name "Zygalski". Henryk Zygalski was a Polish mathematician who helped to break Enigma designing the "perforated sheets" also known as "Zygalski sheets".
• The Bletchley Park mansion in this film is not real Bletchley Park mansion, but Chicheley Hall. ^[1]
• Mick Jagger makes a cameo appearance.
• Mick Jagger owned an original four-rotor Enigma encoding machine which he loaned to the film for historical accuracy in constructing props.

See also

• U-571 (2000)
• Cryptanalysis of the Enigma
• Enigma machine

References

1. ^ Sleeve notes from DVD.

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