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Madame Curie (1944) DVD Review
Madame Curie (1944) DVD Credits:
Madame Curie (1944) Directed by:
Mervyn LeRoy
Madame Curie (1944) Written by:
Not available at this time
Madame Curie (1944) Cast:
Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Henry Travers, Albert Bassermann, Robert Walker
Madame Curie (1944) Released by:
Not available at this time
Region:
1
Madame Curie (1944) DVD Release Date:
30th January 2007
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Madame Curie (1944) Synopsis:

Young Polish physics student Marie marries Doctor Pierre Curie, in whose lab she had worked for a while. On their honeymoon they decide to find out what caused the strange effect Prof. Becquerel has noticed with the uranium/thorium stones for her dissertation. After many experiments they find out that there must be more radioactive elements than uranium and thorium, and they try to isolate it. After years of experiments in a makeshift lab at the University, they are able to isolate a few grains of a new element, radium, from 7 tons of raw material, but at the height of their success, Pierre is killed in an traffic accident.

Madame Curie (1944) DVD Review:


Each year around award season there are always a few biopics, which are almost certain to receive enough acclaim to achieve award nominations, if only for the performances. Apparently it was no different in 1943, because Madame Curie is a compelling biopic which earned seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress.

I felt somewhat misled by the cover of Madame Curie, which had large photos of stars Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon which looked similar to their Mrs. Miniver roles, with a tag-line that makes it seem as though this is a sequel. In all truth the film is about Marie Sklodowska, a Polish girl who attended the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris and eventually made a breakthrough in science with her husband, Pierre Curie, a professor at the university. The only hint of that on the cover is a small photo of a book with a photo of the real Madame Curie.

The first half of Madame Curie is the love story, of how they met and fell in love through the shared love of science. This portion of the film isn’t so much romantic as it is humorous, although there is sweetness in the absurdly extreme intellectuality of the couple. Even as he proposes to her he is using equations as metaphors for why they would make a compatible match together and they take scientific books to read on their honeymoon together. After this arrangement is made we truly see how perfect they are for each other. They find casual discussion of complex science to be invigorating and will abandon all else to work in the lab together. Watching them problem solve together is a fascinating second half of Madame Curie. The problem solving leads them to the discovery of radium, a new element at the beginning of which lead them to 1903 Nobel Prize.

The quality of the picture and sound is fantastic on this transfer. There is some static in each, which is understandable, but it is remarkable how clear some of the shots are. The DVD also includes a vintage Oscar-nominated short, Romance of Radium. There is also a Greer Garson trailer gallery.

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Madame Curie (1944) DVD review written by: Ryan Izay

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