Undercover: How to Operate Behind Enemy Lines

A 1943 Office of Strategic Services training film directed by and featuring John Ford, and the first film ever produced by an intelligence service to train its agents. Structured as a film within a film, it dramatizes the experiences of two OSS recruits: the careful, studious "Student Al" (Victor Varconi) and the arrogant, impulsive "Student Charlie." Through their parallel stories, the film teaches proper preparation, cover establishment, and techniques for blending into enemy culture behind enemy lines. Ford appears as "Col. J.P. Baldwin," an OSS officer — his only sound film acting role. The film was classified during the war and declassified afterward. As a U.S. government work, it is in the public domain.