Created by: Enigma by Robert Harris
Directed by: Michael Apted
Written by: Tom Stoppard
Produced by: Mick Jagger, Lorne Michaels
Other cast: Dougray Scott, Jeremy Northam, Saffron Burrows, Tom Hollander
Release date: January 22, 2001
Genre: Drama, Romance
Running time: 119 minutes
During the heart of World War II, in March of 1943, cryptoanalysts at Britain's code-breaking center have discovered to their horror that Nazi U-boats have changed their Enigma Code. Authorities enlist the help of a brilliant young man named Tom Jericho to help them break the code again. The possibility of a spy within the British code-breakers' ranks looms and Tom's love, Claire, has disappeared. To solve the mysteries, Tom recruits Claire's best friend, Hester Wallace. In investigating Claire's personal life, the pair discovers personal and international betrayals.
Taglines:
Trivia:
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.
Kate Winslet was pregnant with her daughter during the filming of this movie, so the schedule was arranged around that, and at the end of the movie when her character is pregnant, she didn’t need a prosthetic.
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.
Kate Winslet came under criticism from some of the surviving women who served at Bletchley Park during the war because of her dowdy clothes and appearance. The women insisted that even though the country was at war and rationing was the order of the day, they always dressed as best as they could and always maintained a refined appearance. Winslet’s only comment about this criticism was that she had no input on how her character looked; that was all down to costume designer Shirley Russell.
Hester Wallace adjusts her spectacles 16 separate times throughout the movie.
Character Quotes:
“Do you know, without my glasses, nor do you?”
“You’re not the one with the Kestrel intercepts stuffed down your knickers.”
“I seem to move in an endless circle, Mr. Jericho, from one patronizing male to another, always telling me what I am and am not allowed to know. Well, that ends here.”
