Madame Curie [1943] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

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"It's an element that will revolutionize the way we look at science".......2007-02-04

Marie Curie (1867-1934) was a Polish-French chemist who gave the name "radioactivity" to the emission of radiation from atoms. Working with her husband, Pierre she showed uranium to be radioactive. Noticing that the radioactivity was too high to explain by any concentration of uranium, she set out to isolate the source of the radioactivity. Her final discovery was called radium.

This 1943 formal and quite watchable biopic of her life starring Greer Garson doesn't really push any boundaries and at times it's a little dry, but it does give a fascinating insight into how she came to her discoveries.

We first meet Madam Curie when she's the poor idealistic student Marie Sklodowska. She's been living in Paris and studying at the Sorbonne, but life is tough and she's been neglecting her health. One day she faints during the class of the kindly Professor Perot (Albert Bassermann), but she's a star student who is too busy learning to eat. Perot takes a liking to her and introduces her to his bashful, absentminded, and brilliant colleague, Pierre Curie at a soirée his wife is throwing for a few friends.

Pierre is totally devoted to his work. He allows Marie to share his lab and finds that she is a gifted scientist. Appalled that she plans on returning to Poland to teach after graduation, rather than devoting her life to further study, he takes her to visit his family in their country home. Marie and Pierre both tend to concentrate on science to the extent that they don't realize they have fallen in love.

As the two settle down and marry, the plot is propelled forward as Marie becomes convinced that she can unlock the radioactive secrets of a pitchblende rock. It all comes to a head, when decides to make the rock's energy the subject of her doctoral study. But the measurements she takes don't seem to add up, so she decides there must be a third radioactive element in the rock in addition to the two she knows are in there.

Greer Garson was one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood when she made this film - she'd just won the best actress Oscar for Mrs. Miniver the year before - and in this movie she's absolutely full on, giving her character everything she's got. Garson plays Curie as totally driven, perhaps even more than willing to sacrifice family for her scientific endeavors, always spurred on by her devoted husband who is also more than willing to play second fiddle to her obvious talent and genius.

Perhaps the best scene is at the end, when in the face of tragedy the camera stays on the actress for what seems like five minutes, it's a tour-de-force of acting and well worth the wait. Much of the rest of the movie is heavily dialogue driven, which might be a bit dull for some viewers, but there's no denying the obvious chemistry that exists between Garson and Pigeon as they work for four years to hit on a tedious method of crystallization to arrive at pure radium.

At just over two hours long one wouldn't think that a film about physics and radium and the elements would be that interesting, but the inclusion of a voice over by novelist James Hilton narrates the discovery process, telling us what steps the two went through to distill the pitchblende into a mixture of radium and barium. This actually helps us to understand the process in pretty simple terms.

Luckily the film doesn't spend too long on this, instead choosing to concentrate on Curie's frustrations at not being able to isolate the various elements. The movie also steers away from the nastier elements of the process - although at one stage Marie visits a doctor complaining of mysterious burns on her hands - there is very little acknowledgment of the fact that she actually died of leukemia, a result of all those years washing herself in major carcinogens that the medical establishment of the time knew nothing about. Mike Leonard February 07.

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Madame Curie [1943] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Greer Garson , and Walter Pidgeon
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: 1419844067
Release Date: 2007-01-30

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