School for Danger
1947 film
School for Danger (also known as Now It Can Be Told) is a 1947 British second feature ('B') docudrama film directed by Teddy Baird and starring real-life Special Operations Executive agents Captain Harry Rée and Jacqueline Nearne. It depicts the training and deployment of agents of the SOE during the Second World War. It was written by Baird and J. Woolaston.
Premise
In 1943, "Captain Brown" and "Miss Williams" are recruited and trained to be secret agents (Miss Williams as Brown's wireless operator). They are then sent to German-occupied France, under the operational names "Felix" and "Cat", where they organise resistance, carrying out sabotage and helping airmen get back to the UK.
Cast
Captain Harry Rée as Captain Brown / "Felix"
Jacqueline Nearne as Miss Williams / "Cat"
W/Cdr. E. Baird as Henri Picard
Release
The film had its Royal premiere at the London Pavilion on 7 February 1947.
Reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This restrained unemotional account has a verisimilitude and poignancy far surpassing any of the sensational productions which have appeared so far. As Harry Ree cycles quietly through the unspectacular countryside, looking completely French in his beret and the je ne sais quoi of the rest of his shabby clothes, one feels that it must really have been like that – the outwardly humdrum existence, threatened at every turn by danger in innumerable and almost unparalleled forms."
Picturegoer wrote: "There is more real excitement in this deliberately understated spy drama, than in many an elaborate piece of fiction. ... Part author of the scenario, in conjunction with Sqd.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17560632. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “School for Danger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.