Madame Curie (1943) – full review!

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy with a screenplay by Paul Osborn & Paul Rameau that was based on Madame Ove Curie’s book this above average biographical (if fictionalized) drama features Greer Garson in the title role with Walter Pidgeon as her husband and co-discoverer. It relates the first years of the woman scientist’s educated life from her early years as Polish student Maria come Marie Sklodowska (Garson) of Professor Jean Perot’s (Albert Bassermann) at the Sorbonne in Paris in the late 19th Century to her working in Pierre Curie’s (Pidgeon) laboratory their marriage and then research which led to the discovery of radium (and the Nobel Prize in 1903). The film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar while Garson & Pidgeon received lead actor nominations; its B&W Art Direction-Interior Decoration & Cinematography as well as its Sound and Score were also nominated. The cast also includes Robert Walker C. Aubrey Smith Dame May Whitty Reginald Owen Van Johnson who appears as a reporter near the end and Margaret O’Brien (though most of these appear only briefly). James Hilton narrates. #97 on AFI’s 100 Most Inspiring Movies list.

Marie was a student who earned the highest honors in her class of physics at the Sorbonne while she worked her last 6 months of school working in Pierre Curie’s laboratory something which had been arranged by her professor Perot. She had impressed Curie who had previously thought and communicated with his assistant David Le Gros (Walker) that women had no place in science. After her graduation Pierre invites Marie to his parents’ house in the country where he plays croquet with his father Eugene (Travers who like Pidgeon has to sport a ridiculous French mustache & beard) while his mother (Whitty) sizes up Marie. To keep Marie from returning to Warsaw to become a mere teacher Pierre proposes to Marie in one of the most awkward funny and thoroughly delightful (for its professional nature) ways. During their honeymoon they discuss her doctorate and she expresses an interest in exploring the special rocks that Dr. Becquerel (Owen recognizable only by his unmistakable voice) had shown her.

Upon their return the Curies begin what was a multi-year series of experiments and research which eventually led to their discovery and then the successful isolation (which included crystallization) of a new element radium from the others found in ore. Lord Kelvin (Smith) and Perot visited them shortly before their moment of truth which occurred in the shack that the university president (Victor Francen) had allowed them to use. During these years the Curies had a child Irene (O’Brien) who was watched after by his father Eugene who’d moved in with them after his mother had died of cancer. Gigi Perreau (uncredited) appears later briefly as their second child Eve.

*** SPOILERS ***

Pierre is killed in a street accident and the last 25 years of Madame Curie’s research without him isn’t shown nor discussed but merely honored at a speech she gives before an assembly at the film’s end.

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