Much has been said about the mixed character of this excellent film as drama cum comedy, delicately balancing a well-explained passion for science with the joys and hardships of everyday life.
The main protagonists are of course Pierre and Marie Curie, but a major point of this film seems to me different: it celebrates the secondary characters, themselves unimportant, but without whom the genius pair may not have reached their destiny.
These are the uneducated house help who asks the right question at the right time, or the friend who abandons science for patented inventions that eventually help them. But above all Mr. Schutz, a university busybody without scientific achievement, but wise enough to realize the potential of his minions and fighting for them tooth and nail. He is the representative of all the unsung heroes that made the work of Marie and Pierre possible, therefore fully deserving his Prize (les palmes).
That this was the intention is evident from the fact that the film is called "The Prize of Mr Schutz" and not the Curie Nobel prize.
