• PROGRAMME
• SYNOPSES

Marie Curie

1. Author: dal libro di Françoise Giroud
2. Director: Michel Boisrond
3. Screenplay: Marie-Christine Rouzariol, Andrzej Polec, Denis Touret
4. Editor: Laurence Hennion, Armelle Leclercq
5. Photography: Vitold Adamek
6. Music: Jean Marie Senia
7. Starring:
   Marie-Christine Barrault,
   Roger Van Hool
8. Producer: Jacques Nahum
9. Production: FR3/MIP/POLTEL/ANTEA/Cinecittà with FIGARO FILMS/R.T.S.I./ R.T.B.F. and CNC
10. France
11. 90 min.
12. 1995

Everyone knows about Marie Curie. She was the first female professor at the Sorbonne, the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of Radium (in Physics, 1903), and winning a second Nobel Prize (in Chemistry, 1911, for her research on radioactivity). She was a woman of great personality, who was shy and gentle but strong and tough, and did not like to express her feelings. This is the personality wonderfully described by Françoise Giroud in the book Une femme honorable (An Illustrious Woman) which had great success in France. The book provided the basis for the film of the same name, in which the personality is brought alive by Marie-Christine Barrault’s excellent performance. The first of three-part film is presented at the festival. Marie Slodowska is Polish but in Poland, oppressed by Tzarist Russia, women are not admitted to university. Like her sister, Marie went to Paris to continue her studies. Marie is accepted with warmth by doctor Curie, his wife and his son Pierre, who is a promising physicist but rather dreamy, idealistic and unambitious, and is convinced of the beauty of pure science. The meeting with Pierre marks only the beginning of a fertile scientific and sentimental relationship which will be broken, in the second episode, by the accidental death of Pierre. Marie and Pierre share the same convictions, the same passions, the same values. Young, poor but determined, they work hard together. Starting from an idea of Marie’s they devote four years to the research of a “new, unknown, element which has the property of radioactivity”. The discovery of Radium and winning the Nobel Prize frees them from the frugal life they lead; but they refuse the commercial exploitation of their research.

Other projections:

Vedere la Scienza Festival

• Milano
  5/10/2002-6/10/2002

Vedere la Scienza

• Bologna
  27/5/2004-5/6/2004

VEDERE LA SCIENZA 2006

• Milano
  3/3/2006-9/3/2006