School for Secrets (1946)

Overrated and overhyped

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I'm not certain that the Brits were quite ready to reveal their secrets (like high-tech radar or "windows") even in 1946 because so much of this film is made of chit chat about uniforms and interloping schoolmasters. I learned something about the stresses involved but little about the shadier side of the work.The talkiness is somewhat relieved towards the end when the film takes us on bombing missions over Europe, following a boffin or a doughty RAF man like Richard Attenborough. Pretty daring, actually, those scenes of flight.But the Brits were on the brink of making some of the finest films about World War II that ever appeared on screen, "The Cruel Sea," for instance. And this one looks a little pallid.

I was a Junior Scientific Officer at TRE Malvern and lent my Wellington aircraft to the film makers to show 'window' deployment. I recall seeing a clip of this activity in 1946, whether in a cinema or at TRE theatre I cannot recall. The DVD does not show it. The DVD is factually incorrect,the acting dreadful and the plot frequently chronologically incorrect. Life at TRE was nothing like that portrayed and the love story sloppy in the extreme The operator in the Bruneval Raid was Flight Sergeant Cox, the only person dressed in RAF uniform. Probably as some colonel in a plush office whose nearest to the war was the golf course or polo ground saying that'We can't have an RAF chap in army uniform eh what' It was this raid which caused the overnight exodus from Worth to Malvern College for fear of reprisals. R.B-K

My local TV guide gave me high expectations for this movie ... but alas I was disappointed. It's not that the acting is bad. With Ralph Richardson in the lead how could it be? Nor is the subject matter uninteresting. However "School for Secrets" is poorly constructed. It piles scene on scene, without building up to a proper climax. It has too many main characters - and most of them are written as semi-humorous stereotypes. One day someone will make the definitive movie about the development of radar during World War II, but this isn't it.

This film, about how "boffins" contributed to the English war effort (by inventing airborne radar and other technological miracles), was made to help everyone cheer up and keep that upper lip stiff during the hard post-war recovery years.The real delight in watching it from 50 years distance is in the acting, writing and direction. We have grown used to seeing the likes of Richardson, Huntley, Hordern, Attenborough, Laurie et al in "feature" roles (nay, on display as museum exhibits). Most of them are now gone, but when this film was made--at the hand of the incomparable Peter Ustinov--they were in their prime and they were playing main characters. It is a little like the days "when gods walked the earth".The delight in this film is not in the plot (although it is a sobering reminder of just how much technology has moved this century) but in the language of the Ustinov script and in the effortless way that the principals go about their craft. I doubt that any of the four knighthoods given to director and cast were for this film, but one can see in it film why they achieved this recognition in the end."School for Secrets" remains, as I am sure it was always intended to be, a "jolly fine" cheer-up story.