acatseye if you love science and bio's and appreciate a solid marriage. If ever a film was able to put these together as well as here. If you like a quite movie on a gray day, this is it. no remake please. Men should take a lesson here on how to treat a lady. A good hearten sentimentalist will tear and find no shame in it. film has dedication & compassion. con's - it stretches a little but i didn't mind.

Steffi_P Scientists are one of a number of professions whom over the years Hollywood has mercilessly stereotyped. In the movies, at best they have been charming but out-of-touch boffins, at worst cold-hearted and humourless beings. Madame Curie however is a rarity in that it shows scientific folk as being the dreamy, romantic types that they so often are in real life.Adapted by sci-fi novelist Aldous Huxley and others from the biography by Marie Curie's daughter Eve, the screenplay makes concession to the fact that Hollywood movies are designed for mass consumption. As such the scientific jargon is dumbed down, almost painfully. On the one hand technical talk is skipped over as babble (as in a not-so-discrete dissolve during Marie and Pierre's walk home together when she begins quizzing him over formulae) and, conversely, the protagonists seem implausibly clueless at times (the idea of the Curies dismissing the stain at the bottom of the bowl and taking days to realise it might be radium is laughable). But nevertheless it's impressive and rewarding the way the writers find ways of making real scientific concepts easily digestible, such as the discovery of radium focused in waiting for the right number to appear on a spectroscope.For the two lead roles MGM decided to re-team its star-couple of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, previously seen as Mrs and Mr Miniver in the previous year's Best Picture winner. Sadly they don't compare to their earlier incarnations, the interaction between them veering from wooden to melodramatic. However, as their on screen relationship develops the affection appears very real and touching. These aren't exceptional performances in their own right, but the rapport between the two of them is clear and effective.Thank goodness director Mervyn Leroy has the sense to direct this movie with steady delicacy, with long takes and measured performances giving the story the dignity and also the humanity it requires. There's a particularly nice moment where the Curies are by their daughter's bedside, Walter Pidgeon telling a story to little Margaret O'Brien, Garson sat silent and motionless between them, the camera dollying in, then out, upon her face as the emotion of the moment plays across it.Madame Curie is a far from perfect work, and Hollywood will probably never get science quite right. And yet this picture achieves a quite wonderful thing – a marriage between the magical romanticism of that great movie-making factory, and the equal yet misunderstood allure of scientific endeavour. The common ground exists, and Madame Curie treads it.

wes-connors Polish science student Greer Garson (as Marie Sklodowska) goes to study in Paris and is accepted as an intern by reserved physicist Walter Pidgeon (as Pierre Curie). Ms. Garson's amazing beauty immediately causes Mr. Pidgeon and young assistant Robert Walker (as David Le Gros) to become distracted in the laboratory, but they grow accustomed to her attractiveness. When Garson graduates, she plans on returning to Poland, but Pidgeon proposes she stay and become "Madame Curie". Garson has noticed an irregularity which leads the couple to discover the element radium...This was a prestige project from MGM, which they secured for Greta Garbo. She telegrammed, "Wonderful plans," but requested a complete manuscript. After some scrambling, there was no complete script. At the time, Garbo felt the roles the MGM offered to her were too repetitive. In hindsight, "Madame Curie" doesn't appear all that different from other Garbo roles, so it may have ended well. Garson and "Two-Faced Woman" (1941) photographer Joseph Ruttenberg certainly showed he would good with Garbo, if she was interested in hiving him another shot. The MGM team shows their usual skill throughout, although the resulting film was less than indicated by seven "Academy Award" nominations.****** Madame Curie (12/15/43) Mervyn LeRoy ~ Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Albert Bassermann, Robert Walker

tjonasgreen This picture illustrates everything wonderful about the confidence, expertise and narrative power of Hollywood films near the end of the classic period: it is entertaining, intelligent and carefully made in every department. A smooth celebration of scientific theory and of the romantic partnership of two scientists.The first third of the film is in many ways the best: a very funny and sensitive depiction of the courtship of two gauche scientists. Often filmed in long-shot on beautifully detailed, cavernous sets, we see Garson and Pigeon sometimes isolated in space, sometimes haltingly moving through crowds, tentatively finding their way to each other. Though Mervyn Leroy could be a stolid director, here he shows great delicacy and judgment and he perfectly sets a mood of gentle comic romance.The middle third deals with the engrossing scientific mystery that led to the discovery of radium. The lightness of touch and the humor of the first third are not entirely abandoned here, but there is a greater seriousness and a kind of reverence for knowledge and scientific endeavor that is virtually absent from films today (the exception would be A BEAUTIFUL MIND, which I kind of hated). There are some striking visuals, including a tracking shot across hundreds of bowls of evaporating chemicals and a haunting image of a glowing dish of radium in a large, dark shed.The last third is the dullest and most conventional portion of the film: fame and celebration for the Curies and a renewal of their love just before Pierre died prematurely in a traffic accident. The high point here is what surely won Pigeon his Oscar nomination for Best Actor: the speech to a jeweler in which he describes the beauty of his wife just before his untimely death. There is also the evocative image of a wet umbrella broken under a wagon wheel.Of course, what you think of this idealistic, creamy and sure-footed vehicle (which must have packed 'em in at Radio City Music Hall) depends entirely on what you think of Greer Garson, as well as your opinion of the popular Garson-Pigeon screen team. Their looks and personalities were perfect matches, templates of feminine and masculine 'virtues'. There was nothing sexy about them but they suggested a platonic ideal of what every child would wish their parents to be. They were the last stars to make middle age look glamorous and desirable.As for me, I like her. Her mannerisms are kept to a minimum in this restrained performance. The famous tinkling laugh, the arched eyebrow, the flaring nostrils -- so overused in some other films -- are not much in evidence here. But her best qualities are: the sense of intelligence, of quiet watchfulness, self-possession, dignity and tact are all here. The source of her screen personality has always seemed sane and tranquil, relaxing to watch and finally, to me, admirable. I can understand why some people (like critic Pauline Kael) felt that Hollywood's ladylike stars presented an outdated, oppressive ideal for women. But from this distance, Garson's confidence and ease, her capability, her self-containment all strike me as civilized and even sophisticated traits. She played grownups, and we have never had enough of those on screen . . .