Old Movies that Feature Real-life Inventors and Scientists

It is interesting to note that the mid 1930s to the early 1940s produced a number of narrative movie projects featuring real-life inventors and scientists. While they don't necessarily work like documentary films that accurately discuss the facts in the lives of these important people, these movies provide inspirational stories highlighting many historical contributions in science and technology. Being films produced in the earlier periods of cinema, they also serve as windows to an era of filmmaking that falls within the time before and during World War II.

"The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936)

"The Story of Louis Pasteur" is a fictional tale inspired by the life of the French scientist Louis Pasteur, the man who invented pasteurization and also the one who made the first vaccine against rabies. It shows the story of the scientist being considered a quack in the medical community during his time because of advocating medical workers, particularly the doctors and surgeons, to always wash their hands and boil their instruments before treating a patient. He believes that doing these will destroy the microbes that can cause infections or even fatalities to people under surgical procedures.

"The Story of Alexander Graham Bell" (1939)

"The Story of Alexander Graham Bell" is a fictional biography of the American inventor behind the creation of the telephone. The film revolves around Alexander Graham Bell's life as he teaches the deaf an effective means to communicate. Soon, he falls in love with a deaf girl and he tries to invent a means to telegraph the human voice from this inspiration. After inventing the telephone, he marries and becomes rich and famous. However, complications happen when a rival company tries to threaten and ruin him.

"Edison, the Man" (1940)

Another "Hollywoodized" biopic, "Edison, the Man" depicts the life of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, ticker-tape machine, phonograph, Dictaphone, and many other significant technological contributions. The film focuses on the most productive years of his life as an inventor. But for some reason, the movie doesn't feature his great contribution in the development of motion picture. The story highlights how Edison struggles through a six-month ultimatum for him to complete his dream of lighting up the streets of New York. Otherwise, he loses his contract and his credibility in his profession.

"Madame Curie" (1943)

"Madame Curie" is a reasonably faithful biographical film about the accomplished Polish-French physicist and chemist Marie Curie, best known for pioneering research on radioactivity. She is the first person to be honored two Nobel Prizes and the first woman to be recognized with a Nobel Prize in science. This biopic features the young Marie as a promising physics student who starts working on a laboratory space of her future husband Pierre. Their marriage also leads to an extensive professional partnership through their painstaking research and experimentation about isolating the radioactive substance radium. Amidst her husband's street accident that caused his death, the grieving Marie struggles to continue the great scientific work she and Pierre shared together.