Following World War I, the British economy was in crisis, and Britain’s status as a world-leading power was challenged as a result. This decline was also reflected in the nation’s film industry, with British film production grinding almost to a halt in the mid-1920s.[1]The British government decided to intervene in this state of affairs with the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act. This piece of legislation stipulated that a percentage of films distributed and exhibited in Britain had to be made in Britain. The quota was set to gradually increase over the first ten years of the Act’s existence, ensuring that an ever-greater number of British films would be made, distributed and seen by audiences.[2]

The Government decided to implement this quota not only to ensure more jobs in the British film industry, but also because as cultural products, films could reflect appropriately British values to audiences. The popularity of Hollywood films raised fears that British audiences, particularly young people, were being ‘Americanised’. Unfortunately, the implementation of the Cinematograph Films Act did not work out as intended. Hollywood studios moved onto British soil and started producing ‘British’ pictures as cheaply as possible. These films became known as ‘quota quickies’, made on a shoestring budget. Hollywood studios did not want these films to seriously compete with their prestige productions; they simply existed to fulfil the quotas set out by law.[3]

Rather than building a sustainable and influential British film industry, the 1927 Act encouraged the production of a lot of poor-quality films which harmed rather than helped the reputation of British film. The effects of the Act were not all bad; a lot of British film personnel were able to cut their teeth on the sets of quota quickies, which allowed them to get a lot of experience in a short space of time. The scripts of these films were not carefully crafted or edited; the objective was to get something produced as quickly and cheaply as possible. The speed and quantity at which the films were made provides opportunities for these films to reveal the everyday cultural narratives and assumptions circulating in interwar Britain.

Most of these pictures disappeared as quickly as they came; there was little incentive to preserve products generally seen as low-quality. Some, however, remain accessible to us today: for example, The Love Test directed by Michael Powell in 1935. Powell went on to have a long and illustrious career in the British film industry, which may partly explain why The Love Test has been preserved when similar films by other directors were not. He made this film for the British arm of the Fox Film Company. Googie Withers appears in one of her very first screen roles, and the male lead is played by South African actor Louis Hayward who had a reasonably successful career both before and after The Love Test.

It is not just the cast and crew that makes The Love Test more remarkable than most quota quickies. The film’s treatment of gender roles is also one that appears unusual for a 1930s production; although Steve Chibnall points out that none of the contemporary reviews comment on this aspect.[4] The Love Test focuses on the male and female staff of a chemistry lab, who are trying to invent non-flammable celluloid – certainly a product close to the film industry’s heart. Mary, the female lead, is a studious and talented lab worker on track to be promoted to a managerial position. Some of the male staff of the lab, led by the misogynist Thompson, are threatened by her professional success. His solution: one of them must seduce Mary, so that she will be distracted from her work.

Lab worker John (Louis Hayward) takes up the challenge; initially he finds it impossible to get Mary to focus on anything other than her career. She firmly tells him she has ‘eliminated sex.’ However, with the encouragement of her neighbour Kathleen, Mary starts to take an interest in her appearance. About halfway through The Love Test Mary has a make-over montage in the manner used by teen and romance films for decades since. With her new hair, make-up and glamourous clothes, Mary and John’s second date is much more successful. Mary’s new appearance also makes John see her as a real romantic prospect, and he stops trying to distract Mary from her career. Mary’s new appearance, combined with her professional skills, ensure her promotion in the lab. However, it is John who eventually finds the way to make celluloid non-flammable.

In many ways The Love Test offers a strikingly feminist narrative: there is no suggestion in the film that Mary should not be working, that lab work is not appropriate for women, or that she is anything other than excellent at her job. On the other hand, Mary is not able to access a romantic relationship until she changes her appearance and interests to encompass more traditionally ‘feminine’ traits. The film presents her post-metamorphosis appearance as more desirable and aspirational than the version of her that was not interested in clothes, make-up or men. The Love Test balances the acceptance of the inevitable emancipation of young women in interwar Britain with the counter-narrative that being sexually desirable to a man is still the most rewarding achievement.

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[1] Steve Chibnall, Quota Quickies: The Birth of the British ‘B’ Film (London: BFI, 2007), p. 1

[2] Laurence Napper, British Cinema and Middlebrow Culture in the Interwar Years (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2009), p. 28

[3] Chibnall, Quota Quickies, p. 4

[4] Ibid., p. 226