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Film Club w/c 4 Apr 2025 - Enigma (2001 film)

Lotus

Well, my first week of my new film club was a flop - nobody did a review of Big Trouble in Little China apart from me, so I guess nobody fancied watching it.

I'm trying again - this week's film is Enigma (2001) I've always been fascinated by what went on in Bletchley park during WW2.

If you are interested in this film, it's available to watch for free on ITVX. If you watch it, please post a review here.

  • I just reviewed this film and did a fun quiz question, but it's disappeared! Hopefully it will appear later, and hopefully this post will "bump" the thread.

     If you watch the film, please post your comments.

  • A reminder of this week's film, if you want to watch it.

    I watched it at the weekend and found it very interesting. It made me research the Enigma machine and how they decrypted the messages. 

    If you don't know, the messages were encrypted using a substitution cypher (substituting one letter for another) Trying to put it as simply as possible, the Enigma machine changed each letter entered so if the operator entered the word  "SUPPORT" the machine might create "VXSSRUW" to replace that word in the encrypted message. So to decrypt the message, all the V's had to be changed to S, all the X's to U, all the S's to P, all the R's to O, all the U's to R, and the W's to T.

    To make it more difficult, the machines were reset daily (the German operators were given a daily code book) To have a chance of deciphering a message, the Allies needed to be able to guess what some of the words might be, for example some messages were weather forecasts and they could guess what some of the words would be in those forecasts and then once they knew some of the substitution letters they could work out other messages. This was called having a crib. 

    In the film they showed a room full of panels with rotating wheels, which looked to me like a prototype computer. I looked it up and this machine was called a Bombe - it helped decipher encrypted messages by allowing multiple Enigma settings to be quickly checked.

    Here's a fun Enigma quiz: Can you decrypt the following encrypted message?

    Here's the crib - the letters follow the same substitution pattern as "SUPPORT" above, and it is about the NAS:

    WKH QDV VXSSRUWV  DXWLVWLF SHRSOH

  • Introducing this week's film:

    Title: Enigma (2001):

    Director: Michael Apted

    Filming Locations: filmed in several locations in England and Scotland, including Loughborough Great Central Station, the Adelphi Building in London, St. Catherine's Church in Sacombe, Argyll and Bute, and Chicheley Hall, which stood in for Bletchley Park.

    Genre: Drama / Mystery / Romance / Thriller / War

    Duration: 1 hour 54 minutes

    Certificate: 15 / Rated R for a sex scene and language

    Cast: Donald Sumpter, Ate de Jong, Tom Hollander, Kate Winslet, Richard Leaf, Ian Felce, Jeanney Kim, Bohdan Poraj, Tom Stoppard, David Brown, Dougray Scott, Matthew Macfadyen, Robert Harris, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Guy East, Hanno Huth, Paul Rattray, Michael Apted, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam.

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

    "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."

    "Codebreaking is an inherently fascinating but not especially cinematic endeavour, which is why Enigma spices up the true story of Bletchley Park and its eclectic group of Nazi code-cracking geniuses with some fictional romance and intrigue."

    "Based on the novel by Robert Harris and adapted for the screen by Tom Stoppard, Enigma is unsurprisingly a literate and accomplished piece, unfussily directed by Michael Apted who keeps the various current and flashback story threads moving neatly in parallel, helped along by a languid score from veteran John Barry."

  • Hi Lotus, I hope your film club goes well this week. My concentration issues probably mean that I won't be able to do you a review. I saw Enigma at the cinema when it came out. Maybe because of a soft spot for the cast. Slight smile I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks of it. But won't add anything here to avoid spoilers.xx

  • I will watch this one, I just didn’t fancy the last film. I’ve been to Bletchley, it’s really interesting. It’s thought that cracking the code shortened the war by two years.

  • Sorry to hear that, this is more my thing, not seen this one so hopefully will watch it! Like Boika I like military history 

  • Military history is my thing so I will try and watch it!