This film does take some patience to get into because it pretty much jumps into the subject of codimg in the profession of espionage. I have seen in spy movies before how a normal letter would have a certain number of words scratched out to reveal the secret message, but I have never before seen sheet music used to send messages. Once you get past the way the film is structured, you will be drawn into this story of the Cipher Bureau where agent Leon Ames ("Meet Me in St. Louis") goes through various theories of how to crack letters and other artlcles absconded that deliver important messages that can help defeat the enemy. Charlotte Wynters is the all American girl who works with Ames, and Joan Woodbury is a foreign agent whose allegiance is questionable. Don Dillaway is the naval officer who meets Woodbury on a train and is later involved in the decoding of classified material. The heavily accented Gustav von Seyffertitz (best remembered as the psychiatrist from "Mr. Deeds goes to Town") is the obvious villain whom they have to expose, and boy, is he clever.
I had to research this film when I started watching it to familiarize myself with the purpose of the cipher bureau and you understand much of what they were talking about. It is complicated for novices just looking for a good spy thriller to fully understand without some prior knowledge, but once you know exactly the accuracy of real cipher bureaus, this becomes easy to follow and actually quite exciting. When they brought out the sheet music and started playing it on piano and later started discussing musical notes in relation to deciphering the codes, it became fascinating. This is a nice programmer to familiarise yourself with issues of security that aren't always presented in detail on the screen, and while it is obvious that many things have changed in the past 80 years, it's a fascinating introduction to what goes on behind the scenes.
I had to research this film when I started watching it to familiarize myself with the purpose of the cipher bureau and you understand much of what they were talking about. It is complicated for novices just looking for a good spy thriller to fully understand without some prior knowledge, but once you know exactly the accuracy of real cipher bureaus, this becomes easy to follow and actually quite exciting. When they brought out the sheet music and started playing it on piano and later started discussing musical notes in relation to deciphering the codes, it became fascinating. This is a nice programmer to familiarise yourself with issues of security that aren't always presented in detail on the screen, and while it is obvious that many things have changed in the past 80 years, it's a fascinating introduction to what goes on behind the scenes.