Movies - Enigma

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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 (Enigma).

Plot

A young genius frantically races against time to crack an enemy code and solve the mystery surrounding the woman he loves.

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 best friend, Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet). In investigating Claire's personal life, the pair discovers personal and international betrayals.

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

Criticism

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 movie the fictitious traitor turns out to be Polish, while only slight mention is made of the contributions of prewar 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.

Anachronisms, factual errors and discontinuities

Some modern bulbs in close-ups of Enigma machines.
In the opening scene we see concrete sleepers on the railway line which were not introduced until early 1980s.
The black chimneys of Portcullis House, built in the late 1990s, can be seen in the long shots of the Houses of Parliament.
Early in the movie someone uses the word "presently" to mean "at present" or "now". In the 1940s (and earlier) in England "presently" meant "soon, in a short time".
Rape (Canola), though its bright yellow color makes for an attractive shot, was not planted in England until the late 1970s.
In the final scene, in London after the war (1946), Hester steps off the pavement and we see double yellow lines painted at the curbside (denoting No Parking). These road markings were introduced much later.
During the train journey towards the end of the movie, the view from Jericho's compartment shows the train going in opposite directions before and after the stop at the station, despite the fact that the train is seen leaving the station in the same direction as it arrived.
Although set during the Second World War, all the scenes in and around Trafalgar Square show modern London buses in the background.
The Enigma machine is designed to encode/decode letters only. However, in every scene that Morse code is heard, numbers are sent.

Trivia

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.
Hester Wallace adjusts her spectacles 16 separate times throughout the movie.
The Bletchley Park mansion in this film is not *the* actual Bletchley Park mansion, but another property. According to the tour guides at the real thing, the real Bletchley Park did not look enough like Bletchley Park to the production company to have been used in the film.
The scarf that Tom wears throughout the film is a King's College, Cambridge scarf, which is the college Tom is a fellow of in the book.
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.

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