see the requirements

Women’s Biopics in Classic Hollywood – Madame Curie (1943)

Ten years after Queen Christina, MGM released another classic women’s biopic: Madame Curie, this time about the Polish-French physicist/chemist Marie Curie (1867-1934), who was “the first woman (Links to an external site.)Nobel Prize (Links to an external site.)win the Nobel prize twice (Links to an external site.)

Biopics about male scientists aren’t common. Some examples are The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), about the microbiologist; Kinsey (2004), about a sexologist; Embrace of the Serpent (2015), scientists in the Amazon; A Beautiful Mind (2001), Russell Crowe as John Nash, math genius; The Theory of Everything (2014), about Stephen Hawking; October Sky (1999), Jake Gyllenhaal as rocket scientist; The Right Stuff (1983), astronauts; First Man (2018), first man on the moon; The Insider (1999), Russell Crowe as chemist/whistleblower; The Imitation Game (2014), about Alan Turing, mathematician and computer scientist.

Even less common are biopics about female scientists, which you can find in the Women’s Film List in Files. Like biopics about queens, their plots are often about the conflict between a scientist’s personal life and her work, which often involves “saving the world.” The films differ widely in choosing to focus on the details of her scientific work, which usually needs to be explained and dramatized simply to a nonspecialist viewer. So what devices are used in these science biopics to explain principles and experiments and then create emotional and dramatic suspense? How is a woman scientist’s work woven with details of her personal life? How does a film like Madame Curie depict Marie and Pierre, her husband, as marriage AND parental AND science partners?

Remember these basic questions to come up with common and digressive elements of the women’s biopic:

• Why and how is the childhood of the subject introduced, if it is?
• What is the subject’s legacy (family and ethnic origin, parental issues, previous tragedy)?
• What stage(s) of the subject’s life does this biopic emphasize most?
• How is the subject’s appearance, and maintenance of it, significant to the film?
• How does the film show that the subject is remarkable, different from the rest?
• Is the subject cursed or burdened by some recurring force? Are there omens about her future?
• What is the basic plot of this biopic? How are the events of her life narrated into a story?
• Who are the most important members of the subject’s inner circle (family, friends, associates)?
• What is the subject’s relationship with her public, if there is one?
• What objects, symbols, animals, people, words recur in this biopic?
• What is the role of romantic love in the subject’s life? The role of sexuality?
• Does the film trace the subject’s transformation? If so, what kind?
• How do other characters fight over the subject woman, and for what reasons?
• What is the takeaway about this woman’s life?
• How strong are traces of other genre films—epic, war, romantic comedy, melodrama—in this biopic?
• Now that you’ve seen two classic-era MGM women’s biopics, can you see common narrative patterns or devices in them?

Watch Madame Curie (USA: Mervyn LeRoy, 1943; Amazon Prime Video; Netflix DVD; YouTube; Vudu)

A) Ask 3 discussion questions of your own regarding the film. The questions can be about specific techniques used in specific scenes, the characters, the nature of the scientific profession, the plotline, unexpected outcomes, the ending.

B) Answer 3 discussion questions posed by other students.

other’s post(should reply to this):

A. My questions:

1. In the beginning of the film Pierre says that “Women are the enemy of science, women and science are incompatible.’ Do you think he came to regret this view or not?
2. Who falls in love with the other first, Pierre or Marie? How do you know?
3. Madame Curie is another scientist we’ve met in this course, out of the other scientists we’ve seen in the other films, who do you think she is most similar to?

D. I think an interesting discussion would be to talk about how women are portrayed in these biopics, like Madame Curie, as being demure and deferential. She’s a woman who literally discovered a new element, one that was incredibly difficult to pinpoint, but MGM made certain that she acted reserved and shy about her intelligence and work. It was up to Pierre to push her to continue doing her research and expound on her knowledge of what was contained in the pitchblende. As mentioned in the writing, women who were the main stars of early biopics didn’t have much of a public image unless they were royalty, as women weren’t expected to participate in the public sphere. We then only know about their lives through their accomplishments witnessed by others, and their diaries written by themselves. It would be interesting if these early biopics were remade with more feminist undertones to them.

C) Respond to at least one other student’s post with polite agreement or disagreement, giving evidence for your point of view. Answering another student’s question doesn’t count.

other’s post:

A)

1. Why did Dr.Curie not take well to working with women? What did this provide to the storyline?
2. What is your opinion on Eugene’s thought that women without a child is a parasite? Why do you think he said this?
3. Why are women not seen as equal in education, particularly science? How did Madame Curie work against these barriers?

D)

In Dennis Bingham’s “Prologue”, he wrote how women in biopics often find themselves through a man and have success in something they could never have dreamt about on their own. I thought this was very interesting and the basis of this film itself. Madame Curie had her own dream and that was to go home to Poland and be a teacher like her father. But Dr.Curie changed that dream and made Madame Curie have a different one that involved himself and science. Although this change of dream was successful and made Madame Curie happy, I wonder what it might have been like if she had followed her own dreams and created something extraordinary on her own. This definitely could have happened and it would have made for a great film that showed more of a woman that knew she was intelligent and decided to follow her own dreams to success.

D) Read: Dennis Bingham’s “Prologue” on female biopics in his Whose Lives Are These Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre (attached) Bring up an interesting issue from this chapter that would start a discussion.

E) Do 300C on Madame Curie in the Mme Curie 300C discussion, The 300-word paragraph (300C) should expand on a topic/question about some aspect of the film. Instead of any description, it should be packed with analysis and critical thinking about Madame Curie.