skallisjr Review of Rendezvous

Rendezvous (1935)

Early Cryptography Drrama -- Okay For Its Genre

[7/10 · 22 February 2010]

There have been not too many films based on serious "codebreaking"; this one was associated with the famous cyrptanalyst, Herbert O. Yardley. An Army officer, who wrote a biook, "Ciphering and Deciphering," under a pseudonym is identified as the author by a young lady he was dating; she was the niece of the Secretary of War, so he finds himself assigned to the somewhat beleaguered cryptological group. He turns out to be good at it, trying to find out what the Germans were transmitting, since the Germsn submsrines were sinking allied shiops. Espionage s rife in Washington, and the crypto section needs to crack the German secret cipher to determine hoe they were directing their war efforts. The officer shows his crypto talents when he first enters the group's workplace and makes an instant analysis based on the statistical distribution of characters in the cipher Over the course of his studies, he also figures out a repetitive pattern of character shifts, which enables him to determine the actual message. Spoiler: The deciphered message reveals that the US code books have been compromised, giving the rendezvous point for military and associated ships en route to support the war effort, One could quibble that actual cipher messages would be in German rather than Ebglish, and that the enciphering schemer would be a little more complex than what was presented, but that's a quibble: the average moviegoer isn't a cryptologist. Although codebreaking plays a part in the film, the machinations of the espionage agents is as important in the story as the cryptanalysis. Not a bad drama, with a touch of humor added.