…………………………………………………

Madame Curie Movie Review

Madame Curie is a 1943 biographical drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. It’s a very well made and superbly acted, but slow movie.

………………………………………………….

“No true scientist can have anything to do with women“

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

The famed female scientist fights to keep her marriage together while conducting early experiments with radioactivity. When you think about a person’s life that is worthy of the big screen treatment, the lives of the Curies would certainly not come to your mind. They led seemingly normal lives, so the decision to adapt their lives to a feature movie was dubious to say the least.

And what about the results? Well, they were mixed expectedly so, but I would say that the film fared better than I’d feared it would be before watching it because the things that it does right, it excels at. For one, the acting is absolutely marvelous. Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson obviously performed together before (‘Mrs. Miniver’ being their finest outing), but here they once again serve as a terrific couple, very believable and charming.

Pidgeon is terrific and very likable. Pierre’s death was definitely tragic and in the movie you feel it as the relationship between the two characters was so well established. Garson steals the show expectedly so and she deserved another Oscar nomination in the years where she was nominated five consecutive times. She is just so elegant, smart and ladylike here while also being a hopeless romantic. She played this role perfectly and she was so well cast.

Madame Curie is at its best in the romantic moments between the two Curies. They are wonderful together and it’s a shame that the movie around them failed to ignite the same spark. There are a couple of moments where the spirit of scientific discovery was truthfully depicted as both romantic and thrilling, but more often than not the film fails to engage you as a viewer.

…………………………………………………..

…………………………………………………..

The pacing is so rough and the film is both overlong and dragging in many sequences. The technicalities are just fine with neither the cinematography nor the score elevating the material to true cinematic heights. It just all felt very limited in its scope. This is why none of the Oscar nominations in those categories feel deserved to me while the acting nods were most definitely earned. Mervyn LeRoy also made much better movies in his career.

Madame Curie is a solid, albeit somewhat lifeless biopic. The lives of the Curie couple were just never interesting enough for the cinematic treatment, resulting in a slow, overlong drama that with the exception of the central romance failed to ignite the spark. It’s a technically uninspired movie also, but the scientific scenes were moving as was the romantic dialogue. The acting performances from Walter Pidgeon and especially the great Greer Garson were the real highlights here.

My Rating – 3.5