A Tale of Two Cities (1958)

hyped garbage

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The 1935 film is a classic, and this film from 1958 is very close to that, the second-best adaptation by quite some distance. It looks very beautiful, the black and white photography skillful and well-suited to the story, the revolutionary scenes are still powerful despite not being in colour. Richard Adinsell's music score is bombastic, haunting and also a real beauty to listen to. A Tale of Two Cities is very intelligently scripted with a lot of dramatic weight though occasionally a little on the ponderous side, while the story- even when straight-forwardly adapted- is still as powerful and moving as one would expect, with the ending quite heart-breaking in its tragedy. The direction shows command of the source material and the ability to bring out the best of the cast. Dirk Bogarde is great and very charismatic, plus he probably hasn't been more handsome than he is here. Dorothy Tutin's Lucie is fetching and heartfelt, Christopher Lee is wonderfully vicious and truly hissable and Rosalie Crutchley brings chills as Madame Dufarge if occasionally a little too histrionic. Overall, excellent and a very easy close second-best adaptation. And it is true that it deserves to be judged on its own terms, the whole "the book is better" and "any film/TV series that doesn't follow the story to the letter is immediately terrible, and books shouldn't be seemingly improved upon"(Agatha Christie and Jane Austen adaptations are prone to this in particular) are tired old clichés. 9/10 Bethany Cox

This is a straightforward version shot in black and white with some location shooting at Loire Valley in France. Pinewood Studios is used effectively enough, it is uniformly well acted and Bogarde gives an effective enough performance as the lead and a young Christopher Lee is a hiss-able French Aristocrat.The story deals with the strands of the two most notable characters in the novel by Charles Dickens. Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. Darnay is a French aristocrat who turns his back to the life of wealth and privilege but falls victim to the indiscriminate wrath of the revolution when the reign of terror begins.Carton is an English barrister with a taste for drink who attempts to redeem his misspent life out of his unrequited love for Darnay's wife.There is not much humour in the film because of the subject matter but the pared down story does do the film justice.

In this bicentennial of Charles Dickens it's a good thing to examine all the versions of A Tale Of Two Cities and see aspects in all of them that reflect on the story telling abilities of Dickens. In a Tale Of Two Cities his characters come from a generation or two behind Dickens and it might be the only one of his great work that could be classified as historical. All the rest you can immediately recall to mind are set in his contemporary time.What he did and what Thomas Carlyle did as his contemporary is create characters and write history respectively that forever stamped the image of a seminal historical event in our consciences. For those of us of a historical scholarly bent the image of what Carlyle and Dickens wrote about the French Revolution is soddered into our minds. There's a reason for it, it lies in their research and their abilities as writers.With Dickens it something additional his ability to create unforgettable characters, people whom you once read about and can't forget. Such is Sydney Carton who starts out in the novel as a supporting player but who gradually in the story moves to the first rank and his deed at the end climaxes the story.The Thirties version of A Tale Of Two Cities at MGM and this 1958 film the Rank Organisation are the two best known. Even though MGM's was a Hollywood film it was populated by a cast of British expatriates. Ronald Colman was the Carton of the Thirties and his performance was colored by his impeccable style and good diction. I've always felt Colman so typified the British people as they like to see themselves and we would all like to be Ronald Colman if we're male and come from that blessed isle.In this version Dirk Bogarde's dissolute drunkenness is emphasized far more than with Colman. So is his unrequited love for Lucy Manette the French expatriate played here by Dorothy Tutin. But she loves another, a fellow expatriate Charles Darnay played here by a French actor Paul Guers whom I find to have been dubbed. He does bare a superficial resemblance to Bogarde and that is the real key to the story of A Tale Of Two Cities.The rest of the cast boasts some of the best British performers around at the time like Cecil Parker, Athene Seyler, Donald Pleasance, and Christopher Lee as a cunning and vicious Marquis St. Evremonde. The relationship is changed making Lee and Guers cousins as opposed to an uncle and nephew.Rank Organisation went almost whole hog on this film with an impeccable recreation of late Eighteenth century London and Paris. They could have gone for color, but why be picky. Whatever else A Tale Of Two Cities is politics and history aside, it's about a man who no one thinks has any great character, but in the end really steps to the plate for the one he loves. Which makes the film have a universal theme for the ages.

As an avid admirer of nineteenth century novelist Charles Dickens' work, with an interest in the French Revolution, then I felt compelled to watch this Rank adaptation of; A Tale of Two Cities, directed by Ralph Thomas. Although I have not yet read the original novel, I got the impression that this film adaptation of; A Tale of Two Cities stuck as much as possible to the original novel as Dickens intended it to be.We see in this film adaptation of; A Tale of Two Cities the social origins which culminated in the French Revolution. It illustrates the traditional aristocratic 'ruling class's' demise. The demise of the French aristocracy resulted in a reaction by them, where their fears and anxiety pertaining to their precarious position in society culminated in the mistreatment of the ordinary people of France, otherwise referred to as; 'serfs'. Encouraged by the American War of Independence, and influenced by the intellectual elite of The Enlightnement movement culminated in the French Serfs rebelling against the causes of their imposed position within an undemocratic, feudal society, which permitted their mistreatment by the aristocracy. It is the factors of mistreatment and being restrained by their inability to change their situation via the democratic processes we have today, which caused the French serfs to overthrow the aristocratic ruling class at that time in the Eighteenth Century. The over-throwing of the French aristocracy subsequently made way for a new elitist ruling class to emerge in the form of industrialists and businessmen, thereby creating a new type of class consciousness for modernity.As to the acting in the film, it is an eclectic bunch of British character actors playing the parts. This is exemplified by the part played by Dirk Bogarte, who makes the character he plays a portrayal of himself, as opposed to immersing himself into the character, and becoming it! Bogarte illustrates that he is able to become the character he plays in such films as; The Blue Lamp' (1950), where he acts the part of villain Tom Riley with a real and definite intensity. If there was to be any accolades for acting in; A Tale of Two Cities, it would go to the actor, Christopher Lee who played the part of the bombastic French nobleman,Marquis St. Evremonde .If the film is going to be defined as worthy of watching, it is due to the director's ability to keep close to the original Dickens novel.