Red Joan

Red Joan is based on a novel of the same name written by Jennie Rooney, which was itself inspired by the life of Melita Norwood.[3] Norwood worked at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association as a secretary and supplied the Soviet Union with nuclear secrets.[4] The materials that Norwood betrayed to the USSR hastened the pace at which the Soviets developed nuclear bomb technology.[5] Her story, which reaches as far back as 1938, is recalled in flashbacks as Joan in old age is questioned by the Special Branch.[6] The questioning reveals that Joan was not actively supporting communism, but was more concerned about "levelling the playing field" to maintain peace in the post-World War II world.

Cookson is the young Joan Smith studying physics at Cambridge. She became involved with Communists and radical politics through her friend Sonya (Tereza Srbova) and Leo Galich (Tom Hughes), a German Jew.[7] Sonya and Leo Galich are cousins, but the former grew up with the latter after she was orphaned and their relationship is more like that of a brother and a sister than cousins. Through Sonya, Smith meets and falls in love with the intense intellectual Leo.

Joan is recruited to work for the wartime Tube Alloys project to built an atomic bomb for Britain and meets the scientist Max. Leo tries to recruit Joan to spy for the Soviet Union, but she rejects his appeal and ends her relationship with him, accusing him of using her. Joan falls in love with Max, but their relationship ends when Max tells her that he is unable to divorce his wife and he wants Joan as his wife, not his mistress. Until 1967, Britain had very strict divorce laws, making divorce very difficult to obtain. In 1945, Joan is appalled by the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and is frightened when it is suggested that Britain develop its own atomic bombs to possibly use against the Soviet Union. Joan contacts the Galichs to provide information about the British nuclear program to the Soviet Union.

In an atmosphere of Cold War suspicion and paranoia, Joan finds her work increasingly difficult. After she again accuses Leo of using her, he dies, apparently a suicide, through it is later suggested he was murdered. Sonya flees Britain and Joan learns that her child was really Leo's. The close sibling-like relationship between the Galichs adds to Joan's sense of betrayal. Joan returns to Max who has finally divorced his wife. After the Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb in 1949, Max is arrested by Scotland Yard and is charged with espionage for the Soviet Union. Joan confesses to him that she has provided the intelligence that led to him being charged, but he forgives her. Joan blackmails Sir William Mitchell, a high-ranking diplomat who is really a Soviet spy to help Max; as a result, Max is released from prison. Joan and Max go to Australia, but return to Britain at some point.

In 2000, Joan is arrested and charged with espionage. She is interrogated by two detectives from Scotland Yard, whom she accuses of misunderstanding her life, but gradually concedes that she did provide information to the Soviets. The tabloid press goes into a "feeding frenzy" and vilify her as a traitor, calling her "Red Joan". Her lawyer son Nick Stanley first agrees to defend her, but then disavows her when he learns that she did provide intelligence to the Soviet Union. Finally, Joan is able to convince him that her actions were motivated only by the desire to stop nuclear weapons being used again and he agrees to defend her, standing by her as she faces the tabloid journalists outside her home.

The film stars Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson, and is directed by Trevor Nunn.[3] David Parfitt is the producer, and the screenplay is by Lindsay Shapero.[8]

The film had its world première at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2018.[9] Shortly after, IFC Films acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film.[10] It was released in the United States and in the United Kingdom on 19 April 2019.[11][12]

The film has a slight resemblance to the life of Melita Norwood, but there are many differences:

• Melita studied Latin and Logic at the University College of Southampton, and dropped out. The film portrayed Joan as studying physics at Cambridge and gaining a first class degree.
• From 1932, Melita worked as a secretary with the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, long before the war started. Much of the work done by the BNF during the 1939–45 period was of vital use for the defence industry, and included solving many of the corrosion problems of seawater-cooled systems in ships. No work was ever carried out on active materials for nuclear weapons. As secretary to G.L. Bailey, the Research Superintendent, she had access to the papers prepared at the BNF for presentation to the research committees and some contractors. Some of these she chose to copy to Russian intelligence. This information was made use of by them and did occasionally result in one of their research organisations publishing development work on non-ferrous metals similar to and sooner than the BNF in Britain. Bailey was on an advisory committee to Tube Alloys. According to Jeremy Bernstein, Bailey was "warned about Norwood’s political associations and was careful not to reveal anything to her."[17]
• Towards the end of 1935, she married Hilary Nussbaum who was of Russian descent (he later changed his name to Norwood), a chemistry teacher, and a lifelong Communist. In 1936, Melita Norwood joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The film portrays Joan as being single during war.
• Norwood’s NKVD espionage career began in the mid-1930s as a member of the Woolwich Spy ring in London. Three of its members were arrested in January 1938 but Melita Norwood was not then detained. She was thus spying long before the war, not after the use of the bomb at Hiroshima as shown in the film.
• The film suggests that she proposed the use of centrifuges to separate the uranium isotopes. This technique was actually proposed in 1919 and accomplished by Jesse Beams in 1934 long before any atomic bomb project.
• The cousins' Leo and Sonya resemble the German Jewish siblings Jürgen Kuczynski and Ursula Kuczynski, both of whom were spies for the Soviet Union. Ursula Kuczynski's codename was Sonya, and like Sonya Galich she married an Englishman to gain British citizenship. Ursula Kuczynski worked alongside Norwood as a spy from 1943 onward. Jürgen Kuczynski did not die in Britain, but instead went to East Germany where he became a prominent intellectual supporting the regime. Ursula Kuczynski also fled Britain in 1950 to escape arrest, but unlike Sonya Galich who went to Soviet Union, like her brother she also settled in East Germany.
• The defection of the nuclear physicist Peter Kierl to the Soviet Union recalls that of the real defection of the Italian nuclear physicist Bruno Pontecorvo to the Soviet Union. Like Kierl, Pontecorvo was a refugee to the United Kingdom who was involved in the wartime Tube Alloys project to build an atomic bomb for Britain that was later merged into the American Manhattan Project, and likewise Pontecorvo defected to the Soviet Union after the war.
• Leo obtains a teaching position with the Catholic Université de Montréal during World War Two. Catholic educational institutions in Quebec at the time did not accept Jews as either students or teachers.
• The character of Sir William Mitchell appears to a composite character based on two members of the Cambridge Five spy ring, namely Donald Maclean (a diplomat who rises up to a senior post in the Foreign Office) and Sir Anthony Blunt (awarded a knighthood and being gay).
• Sir William's lover Kharak, the son of an Indian Maharaja who studied at Cambridge in the 1930s and later becomes a diplomat in Washington DC with an embarrassing habit of being constantly drunk on the job resembles Guy Burgess. Burgess was another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring who likewise served as a diplomat in Washington with a habit of drinking on the job and was very open about expressing his homosexuality. However, Burgess was British, not Indian, but he did come from a very wealthy "Establishment" family who had him educated at the Eton public school and Cambridge University. So having Karak being the son of a Maharaja roughly approximates Burgess's social status.
• In a glaring anachronism, in a scene set in 1945 Sonya refers to the Soviet intelligence as the KGB. The acronym for Soviet intelligence from 1934 to 1946 was the NKVD (Naródnyy Komissariát Vnútrennikh Del-People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). The acronym KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti-Committee for State Security) was only adopted in late 1953.
• KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin defected with some KGB archives in 1992 and named Norwood as a highly important agent. However, some have questioned the validity of evidence from the Mitrokhin archive.

• Red Joan at IMDb
• Red Joan at AllMovie