Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon team for the third time in this fact-based biography directed by Mervyn Leroy, based on Eve Curie's book about her mother. In early 1900s Paris, poor Polish student Marie (Greer Garson) gets a chance to study magnetism with kindly professor Jean Perot (Albert Basserman). Perot also arranges for the shy scientist Pierre Curie (Walter Pidgeon) to share the lab with Marie. As they work together, Pierre and Marie fall in love. Pierre eventually musters up the courage
to ask her to marry him, and she accepts. After their honeymoon, Marie becomes obsessed with a piece of pitchblende that has been displaying some peculiar properties. After five years of work, Marie discovers radium. But as the years go on, Marie and Pierre struggle to raise money to continue their research, hoping to one day be able to isolate radium from the pitchblende. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
With an eye on the Oscars, this typical MGM biopic of the 1940s, a chronicle of the famous French scientists, is middlebrow and inspirational, teaming for the third time Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon.
It had been fifty years since I last saw Madame Curie as a boy, and, frankly, I never remembered nor expected it to be so romantic, so touching, or so moving as it is.
If your intent is to study classic Hollywood melodramatics or the talents of Greer Garson & Walter Pidgeon then this is your film. However, if you're looking for substantial insight into the prestigious career and accomplishments of Marie Curie you will no doubt be sorely disappointed.
February 4, 2009
Randy Tippy
Super Reviewer
Stiff, self important film of a brilliant woman. Greer is fine if a bit grand but the usually wonderful Pidgeon is wooden and declamatory.
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