In 1935, British trade paper “Kine Weekly” approved: “the realistic settings form a sturdy and attractive frame for the plot”, with “very good lighting and photography” distinguished by “a feeling of fluid continuity”. Overall, it was commended for “bright story, clean sentiment, good characterisation, and excellent staging”. What had impressed the reviewer was undoubtedly the elaborate lab setting in a plastics company, which contains much of the action. At this time, Bakelite was only starting to be widely used, and the idea of a woman heading a research lab must have seemed distinctly novel, if not revolutionary.
Only rediscovered in 1990, the year of Powell’s death, The Love Test still strikes an intriguingly modern note in its premise and setting, even if the underlying plot would have already been hackneyed by the time of Shakespeare’s comedies – a man set up to romance an apparently unattractive women falls for her. As in many of Powell’s early films, British business is shown struggling to come up to date, with the company’s bosses mercilessly caricatured, and Googie Withers, whom Powell had recently discovered, playing what Variety engagingly described as “a gum-chewing secretary-vamp who crank-starts Hayward’s engine”, when she offers the hero basic instruction in kissing.
The central couple, Hayward and Judy Gunn, are certainly adequate, but Powell was starting to meet the actors who would become vivid characters in his and Pressburger’s later masterpieces. Withers was clearly ripe for more demanding roles, which One of Our Aircraft is Missing would offer, before she starred in some of Ealing’s greatest 1940s dramas. Two other debutants would return in later Powell films: Bernard Miles is part of the bomber crew in One of Our Aircraft and Dave Hutcheson is a foppish foil to Clive Candy in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.
Future director Arthur Crabtree’s fine tracking shots and high-key lighting are still impressive; and the task that the lab is working on, how to make cellulose nitrate – the same material that film was long made from – less flammable, has a poignant irony for archivists.

Ian Christie