Bridge of Spies

New York, 1957. A quiet old man paints pictures near the water. But he is not an artist. He is a spy from the Soviet Union. His name in America is Rudolf Abel. The police arrest him, and everybody in the country hates him.

Abel needs a lawyer for his trial. Nobody wants the job. So they ask James Donovan. He is a normal lawyer — he works with insurance, he has a wife and children, and he does not want to be famous. But he says yes.

Then Donovan does something surprising: he really tries to help Abel. He says that the police did not follow the rules, and that every person must have a fair trial. People are very angry with him. They call him a traitor. His children hear bad things at school. Donovan loses the trial, but he asks the judge for one thing: please do not kill this man. One day, he says, the Soviets may catch an American — and then we will want to make an exchange.

An American pilot, Francis Gary Powers, flies a special plane very high over the Soviet Union. He takes secret photos. One day, a Soviet missile hits his plane. Powers jumps out with a parachute and lands in a field. The Soviets take him to prison and give him ten years.

At the same time, something big happens in Berlin. The city is divided, and one night the East builds a wall across it. Suddenly there is a new border in the middle of the city. Families cannot see each other.

An American student, Frederic Pryor, is in East Berlin. He is studying economics and he has his university work with him. The East German police stop him. They look at all his papers and numbers, and they think he is a spy. They put him in prison too.

So now Donovan's idea is real. Two Americans are in prison, and the Soviets have one man in America. The Americans ask Donovan to go to Berlin — alone, with no help — and make the exchange.

Berlin is very cold. Donovan has no official job and nobody to help him. And there is a problem: he must talk to two different groups. The Soviets want their spy back. The East Germans want something else — they want other countries to say that they are a real country.

Washington says: one man for one man. Give them Abel, take Powers, and come home. But Donovan says no. He wants the student too. He tells both sides: two men, or no exchange. It is very dangerous, because he is not sure they will say yes.

Then, one cold morning, everyone walks onto the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin. Abel stands on one side. Powers stands on the other. Nobody moves. They wait for a phone call: is the student free? Yes — he is free, at a checkpoint in another part of the city. So Abel walks east and Powers walks west, and the two men pass each other in the middle of the bridge. Donovan goes home. For five years people called him a traitor. Now they call him a hero.

The pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union on 1 May 1960. First the Americans said it was only a weather plane — but the Soviets showed the world the pilot and the plane. It was a big problem for President Eisenhower. The student Frederic Pryor was 28 and studied at Yale University. The East German police held him for almost six months.

The exchange really happened on 10 February 1962. But one detail in the film is different: Pryor was not on the bridge. He was set free at Checkpoint Charlie, in another part of Berlin, at the same time. Powers and Abel crossed the Glienicke Bridge.

In the film, somebody shoots a gun at Donovan's house. This did not happen. People sent him angry letters and made angry phone calls, but nobody shot at his family. Donovan was also not really alone in Berlin: the American government helped him a lot.

And Frederic Pryor saw the film many years later. He said that almost everything about him in the film was invented. Powers had a sad story too: at home, some people said he should have destroyed his plane, and they were angry with him. Many years after he died, in 2012, his country finally gave him the Silver Star, a very important medal.