Romance of Radium

Romance of Radium (1937)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated Pete Smith short takes a look at radium and how it become so important. Dr. Henri Antoine Becquerel (Andre Cheron) discovers that while radium has the power to kill many it also, if used right, has the power to heal. This is a shockenly sober Smith short, which normally isn't the case with his films. Often times he tells sly jokes or wisecracks but that's not the case here as he takes the subject matter very straight. There were other short series out there doing real-life dramas and I can't help but think one of those would have handled the story better. That's not to say this is a bad film because it isn't but it's not good either. Tourneur's direction really doesn't get to add much since a lot of the action is cut up to tell different parts of the story. The best sequence, where the director does get to work some magic, is when an African tribesman is buried after being injured by a tiger. I won't spoil what happens but it's a very nice sequence.

Pete Smith's Academy Award-nominated "Romance of Radium" is worth seeing as a science lesson. It focuses on the chemical element radium, its discovery, and its uses. Of course, nowadays we know how dangerous that stuff can be, so seeing the characters handling it so casually looks insane. In fact, Marie Curie had died from radiation exposure a few years before the movie got released. Not to mention that the movie contains some politically incorrect material.

Aside from those missteps, the movie does contain some good information about the stuff. It's one of the many shorts that got shown to movie audiences back in the '30s right before the feature came on.

An MGM Pete Smith Specialty.

This unusually sober Pete Smith Short, directed by Jacques Tourneur, gives the history behind the discovery of the marvelous substance, radium, and discusses a few of its potential applications, as understood in the 1930's.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

I prefer my Pete Smith Specialties to be on the light side, so it's unusual to find such a relentlessly grim short subject on the subject of radium--with very little in the way of romance, which makes the title questionable.

The accidental study of radium gets off to a start with one man's discovery of stones exposed to the rays of sunlight and then informing the Curies of his experiment. They were so excited by the prospect of looking further into the matter that they began their famous exploration of radium.

Over the years, other discoveries reveal that the substance has a curative power, dangerous as it is--and the narrator refers to the Jekyll/Hyde nature of radium which has to be carefully handled and controlled when scientists are working on it.

The narration ends with the fact that over the decades radium has been beneficial in saving numerous human lives.

A low-key episode from Pete Smith of moderate interest.

For those now undergoing cancer therapy with radiation this film should be of interest. It's from Pete Smith the legendary head of MGM's short subject department back in the golden days of the studio system. The subject is a serious departure from his comedy shorts.

Quite by accident radium was discovered by Henri Becquerrel and he brought it to the attention of fellow scientists in Paris, Pierre and Marie Curie. It was them who identified it as an undiscovered element and it took years to isolate it.

Eventually Madame Curie, a widow for many years after Pierre was killed in a Paris traffic accident died from so much exposure to the stuff. Now it's commonly in use, but the danger of over exposure remains.

MGM eventually gave this story the big screen treatment with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon as the Curies. But for a factual and less romantic story, I recommend this MGM short subject.