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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.

Don't watch this film if you are looking for technical details on radar development, as one 'boffin' reviewer has done. This was written and acted as entertainment, not an educational film, and as such it succeeds. Never seen it before this afternoon, but thoroughly enjoyed watching some of our finest actors from that period, with witty banter that was typical of that era. Recommended as a reminder that we still had a sense of humour, despite the recent end to WWII.

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.

Ralph Richardson is a well-known herpetologist among people who know who's who in herpetology. He's also an electronics engineer and attached to the unit developing radar for the RAF.

You could put Ralph Richardson in anything, and I would praise it to the skies. Saying he's perfectly cast as the understated boffin who tackles whatever is thrown at him in a self-deprecating manner, whether it's turning down an opportunity to join the Home Guard because he's too busy or parachuting into German territory to take apart a prototype of the German efforts at radar, he's always highy watchable and believable. In this movie, he's got quite a cast with him under the scripting and direction of Peter Ustinov: John Laurie, Finlay Currie and Raymond Huntley among the boffins, David Tomlinson and Richard Attenborough among the fliers. Ann Wilton and Peggy Evans are among the women who get a few lines, but it's a bit of "men must fight and women must weep" movie for them. Still, even Finlay Currie barely seems in the movie, when compared with Richardson, which is all right with me.

Not exactly a true reflection of the boffins and their work. But as a piece of history it is spot on - unlike the bombing which never was. It shows the accents, how people lived (my god, the wall paper) and what was important to them. Of course this was a film meant to buck everyone up, to believe they were making a difference and all was well. The acting is very British of that time, I grew up post war when people still talked like that.