Today’s movie is a biography with a scene that happens on
April 19. I hope you will enjoy this film and watch it tonight.
MADAME CURIE
Marie, a poor Polish refugee in
Paris studies physics and math so intensely that she sometimes forgets to eat
and passes out in class. Her professor introduces her to Pierre Curie and
convinces him to let her use his lab for her experiments. Pierre considers
women a distraction to scientists. One rainy day when she has no umbrella, he
walks her home and after that he gradually falls for Marie. They are present
when Becquerel discovers X-rays and she graduates with honors. She plans to
return to Poland to teach, but Pierre invites her to his parent’s country house
for the weekend and to forestall her departure makes an unemotional proposal of
marriage, but she accepts. They get married and afterwards she starts working
on the source of X-rays in pitchblende. She becomes stumped when the only two
radioactive elements in pitchblende don’t give off enough radiation
individually to account for all the radiation pitchblende emits. The Curies
finally figure out there must be an unknown element in pitchblende that is
creating the excess and set out to extract it. They can only get the Sorbonne
to give them an unheated shed for their experiments. At the end they are trying to separate ‘radium’ as they call the
new element and barium, but 458 failed attempts they give up. Marie has burns
on her fingers that might be cancer. They switch to trying to remove the barium,
bit by bit, instead of all at once and the last experiment just leaves a stain
with no crystals. The stain is radium, which glows in the dark. They become
world famous and go on holiday to hide from the press. On April 19, 1906, the
day when they are to be honored for their discovery Pierre goes to buy earrings
for Marie. On the way home the absent-minded Pierre is run over by a wagon and
killed. [1:42:07 to 1:52:16] Marie goes
into a deep funk. She finally recovers and is honored on the 25th
anniversary of radium’s discovery.
One of the better ‘Hollywoodized”
biopics. Garson and Pidgeon play Marie and Pierre as likeable, sympathetic
characters. Entertaining, if somewhat fluffy fare. Interesting in that the film
manages to explain the science so even a layman can understand the problem and
the triumph of solution.
Marie Curie: A Life by Susan Quinn (Simon &
Schuster, New York, 1995) pps. 228-9 and the film at 1:42:32-33 give the date
of Pierre’s death.
Producer - Sidney Franklin
Director - Mervyn LeRoy
Screenplay - Aldous Huxley
Released - December 15, 1943
Awards - It was nominated for the
Best Actor(Pidgeon), Best Actress(Garson), Best Art Direction, Best
Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Original Music Score, Best Picture and
Best Sound Oscars at the 16th Academy Awards
Runtime – 2 hours 4 minutes
Starring-
Greer Garson as Marie Curie
Albert Bassermann as Prof. Jean Perot
Walter Pidgeon as Pierre Curie
Dame May Whitty as Madame Eugene Curie
Henry Travers as Eugene Curie
Margaret O'Brien as Irene Curie (at age 5)
Copyright by Ivan Walters 2014.
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