Enigma (2001 film)
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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.
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Plot
With the war at its height, the cryptologists at Bletchley Park, England, have a problem — the Germans 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 (as Winston Churchill acknowledged) Britain's very survival depends. The cryptologists have cracked the cipher before, they need to do it again. There is also a hint of treachery — is there a spy at Bletchley Park?
Criticism
The film, and by association the book, have attracted criticism for their portrayal of the Polish role in Enigma decryption. In the movie the traitor turns out to be Polish, while only slight mention is made of the seminal contributions of Polish cryptologists to Allied Enigma-decryption efforts. In fact, a traitor was active at Bletchley Park, passing crucial secrets to the Soviet Union: the British spy John Cairncross. These incongruities illustrate the film's use of the World War II Ultra operation as what Alfred Hitchcock called a "McGuffin" — a pretext for a sensational plot. A well-made fact-based film on Bletchley Park's role in World War II would have been welcome to history buffs. Unfortunately, this film has little to do specifically with the realities of Ultra.
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
Miscellaneous
- Mick Jagger makes a cameo appearance.
See also
References
- Wladyslaw Kozaczuk, Enigma: How the German Machine Cipher Was Broken, and How It Was Read by the Allies in World War Two, edited and translated by Christopher Kasparek, Frederick, MD, University Publications of America, 1984. (This is the standard reference on the Polish part in the Enigma-decryption saga.)
External links
- Review by Andrew Hodges (http://www.cryptographic.co.uk/enigmareview.html)
