"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." Charles Dickens' tale of love and tumult during the French Revolution comes to the screen in a sumptuous film version by the producer famed for nurturing sprawling ... more »literary works: David O. Selznick (David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind). Ronald Colman (The Prisoner of Zenda) stars as Sydney Carton ? sardonic, dissolute, a wastrel...and destined to redeem himself in an act of courageous sacrifice. "It's a far, far better thing I do than I've ever done," Carton muses at that defining moment. This is far, far better filmmaking, too: a Golden Era marvel of uncanny performances top to bottom, eye-filling crowd scenes (the storming of the Bastille, thronged courtrooms, an eerie festival of public execution) and lasting emotional power. Revolution is in the air! DVD Features:
Other:Oscar?-Nominated Short Audioscopicks 2 Classic Cartoons: Hey, Hey Fever and Honeyland Audio-Only Bonus: Radio Show Adaptation Starring Colman
IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES...IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES...
Lawyeraau | Balmoral Castle | 08/29/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This is an epic film, adapted from Charles Dickens' book of the same name. It is, indeed, a tale of two cities, as the drama in the film swings back and forth between Paris and London. In Paris, France, the seeds of revolution are being sown. A secret underground is already at work, presided over by a Madame Defarge (Blanche Yurka), who, with her husband, runs a small wine shop. These unhappy citizens are seeking to end the tyranny of the aristocracy, whom they view as oppressors of the poor. The worst of the aristocracy is represented by the Marquis St. Evremonde (Basil Rathbone), an insufferable, effete aristocrat, who cares for no one but himself, much less for the starving masses outside his door, whom he considers to be less than dogs. There is a scene in the film that illustrates this quite aptly.
Meanwhile, one of the victims of the Marquis, Dr. Manette, an innocent man who has been imprisoned in the Bastille for the last eighteen years without benefit of trial, is finally released, a changed man who has lost touch with reality. Dr. Manette is reunited with his daughter, Lucie (Elizabeth Allen), who had thought that her father was dead. Under her love and nursing, he recovers a bit and together travel to England to resume their lives. It is on that voyage that they meet a fellow Frenchman, a young, handsome man who goes by the name of Charles Darnay. They do not know that he is the idealistic nephew of the despicable Marquis St. Evremonde.
Once in London, Lucie and Darnay have occasion to meet. Then, he is accused of treason, having been framed by an emissary of the Marquis. Represented at trial by a team of barristers, which includes Sydney Carton (Ronald Colman), a handsome, melancholy barrister with a penchant for drinking. It is at the trial that Carton makes the acquaintance of Lucie Manette, for whom he develops a deep and abiding secret love. Carton becomes a welcome and frequent visitor to the Manette home, where Lucie holds him in great esteem and considers him her greatest friend. Carton thrives under her attention. So, when she tells him that she is going to be marrying Charles Darnay, Carton simply begins his downward spiral anew. Shortly after, Lucie becomes Mrs. Darnay. Later, Carton resumes his visits with Lucie, none the wiser of his feelings for her. Carton eventually settles for being a favorite of Lucie and Darnay's young daughter, who is watched over by Lucie's former nanny and companion, Miss Pross (Edna May Oliver).
When the revolution in France begins, all hell breaks looks, with Madame Defarge as its spokesperson. She now relentlessly knits shrouds for victims of the guillotine, as the aristocracy and anyone affiliated with them are sentenced to death by kangaroo courts presided over by "citizens". Under false pretenses, Darnay is lured back to France. Even though he knows that he is at risk, he goes, thinking that he will be helping his former tutor and friend, who has been arrested for having been employed by the Marquis St. Evremonde, the Marquis having long since been murdered. When Darnay arrives in Paris, he is arrested as a member of the aristocracy, despite having renounced his title long ago. He is imprisoned, and his wife, daughter, father-in-law, Miss Pross, the family banker, and Sidney Carton, all go to Paris in hopes of helping him. Dr. Manette testifies on behalf of his son-in-law at trial, and it looks as if Darnay may be set free, as the people seem persuaded by the eloquent plea of the man who spent eighteen years unjustly imprisoned in the Bastille. Then, an outraged Madame Defarge steps up to home plate. At Darnay's trial, she rallies her fellow citizens with her revolutionary rhetoric and gets the verdict that she desires.
While Darnay awaits his turn at the guillotine, Carton sees that there is something he can do to help his beloved Lucie. He can return Charles to her. He concocts a daring plan, so that instead of Darnay, the guillotine will meet with him, instead. It is one of the most memorable, redemptive self-sacrifices ever filmed. He also arranges for them to flee France immediately, as the by now insanely bloodthirsty Madame Defarge, aware that Darnay has a child, wants all the descendants of the Marquis St. Evremonde to make contact with the guillotine. Madame Defarge almost succeeds but for the fact that she runs into the formidable Miss Pross. The tangle between these two at the eleventh hour makes for one of the film's most memorable scenes.
This is a superlative film. The cast is stellar and gives performances that are exceptional. The two main standouts are Ronald Colman and Blanche Yurka. Ronald Colman gives a sensitive, restrained performance as Sidney Carlton, the lawyer on the skids, who finally has an opportunity to show his love for Lucie in a way that will be meaningful to her. Moreover, in portraying an attorney with a drinking problem, he does so with a deft subtlety, getting the point across without over doing it. His face shows a myriad of emotions, and his suffering is etched on it, visible with every glance. His velvet voice, as always, keeps the viewer riveted to the screen. Blanche Yurka gives a powerful and compelling performance as the commanding Madame Defarge, who goes over the deep end at the last. Basil Rathbone is excellent as the cruel and narcissistic Marquis St. Evremonde, his every word and action dripping with contempt for the people of France. Of course, who could forget the indomitable Edna May Oliver, who has one of the most memorable scenes in the film, when Madame Defarge crosses her path at a most inopportune moment? The rest of the cast, too many to mention, individually contributes successfully to making this a worthy film, indeed. It should be in the personal collection of all those who appreciate vintage films. Bravo!"
"Tis a far, far better thing..."
Linda McDonnell | Brooklyn, U.S.A | 08/07/2001
(4 out of 5 stars)
"than a lot of other movies, that's for sure! What a wonderful adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities". Like so many of the great author's works, this story is crammed full of images famous outside of the work itself: Madame DeFarge and her incessant, malevolent knitting, Dr. Manet lost in his cobbling, Sydney Carton offering the ultimate love sacrifice. Ronald Colman gives a splendid performance as the world-weary Sydney, and looks surprisingly young without his trademark moustache. Among the good supporting cast, Edna May Oliver, as always, steals the show as the prim Miss Pross, chaperone to Lucie Manet, daughter of the unfortunate doctor held captive in the Bastille for half a lifetime. Like all pre-GWTW Selznick pictures, the movie has an air of the antique about it (like "David Copperfield" and "Little Women"), but for a story set in the distant past, that makes sense. It had been many years since I last saw this piece, and what surprised me were the excellently done mob scene when the French peasants charge the Bastille, and when Madame DeFarge denounces Charles Darney in the witness box. Usually, the only scene excerpted from "A Tale of Two Cities" is the last guillotine shot, but I think it's a disservice to the film to not show more of these other great scenes to a larger audience. "It was the best of times" seeing this grand old film--take my work for it, and rent it yourself."
COLMAN'S FINEST HOUR.
scotsladdie | 03/30/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Originally released for Christmas in 1935, this splendidly produced, atmospheric and magnificently acted film displayed M-G-M's flair for filming literary classics - DAVID COPPERFIELD was released earlier that year - with no expense spared; the storming of the Bastille sequence employed several thousand extras and was filmed on one of Hollywood's largest sets ever. Ronald Colman was intially reluctant to play the role of Sidney Carlton, that charming but dissolute lawyer who commits the ultimate self - sacrifice ...... It took great persuasion to make Colman shave off his trademark moustache for the role of Carlton, but he delivered more than likely his finest performance ( Later in his life, Colman admitted this was his personal favourite of all his roles ). Charles Dicken's stirring classic of seventeenth-century Paris and London and the events surrounding the French Revolution had been filmed as silents on four different occasions -twice each in Great Britain and America - this easily remains the definitive masterpiece. Under Jack Conway's meticulous direction, A TALE OF TWO CITIES offers memorable performances by a fine cast, including the marvelously hammy Blanche Yurka, frightening Lucille LaVerne, vinegary Edna May Oliver, despicable Basil Rathbone, eloquent Henry B. Walthall ( he was the "Little Colonel" in BIRTH OF A NATION ) and, in a radical change of pace, the dimunitive Isabel Jewell, as the pathetic seamstress who accompanies Colman to the place of his execution."
A marvelous example of David Selznick's way with literature,
C. O. DeRiemer | San Antonio, Texas, USA | 05/03/2007
(4 out of 5 stars)
"A Tale of Two Cities is an outstanding example of a film which in memory seemed great and a classic, but when seen again is just a classic. That's not faint praise, either. Jack Conway may be listed as director, but make no mistake...this is David O. Selznick's film. It carries his strengths with great emotional impact, but it carries Selznick's flaws just as emphatically. Thanks to Charles Dickens, we have a hugely empathetic tale of noble sacrifice and redemption, played out against the extremes of injustice represented by the French Revolution. Thanks to Selznick, that story has been brought to life with cinematic fervor, strong actors, melodramatic situations, vast and detailed settings, and a screenplay which may run for over two hours but which never loses our interest. But Selznick was a man who was convinced that if one blow of the cinematic hammer could drive a nail home, then two or three more would naturally do the job better. And so at regular intervals we have characters, major and minor, over-acting. We are left in absolutely no doubt of the nobility of the noble of the heart; how evil the evil are; how dedicated and chirpy the servants are; or when we should tear up, or smile at amusing antics, or be repulsed by the evil madness of the revolutionaries. Selznick even employs message cards to remind us where we are and what we should be feeling, a technique that went out of fashion with the death of the silent movies.
Still, A Tale of Two Cities is undoubtedly a classic of movie making. Thanks to Dickens and to Ronald Colman as Sydney Carlton, thanks to some vivid casting, thanks to a great mise en scene, as they say, and thanks to Selznick's showmanship and craft, one would have to be a cynic among cynics not to be carried away by Carlton's sadness and his natural nobility. Just as importantly, you'd have to be dead in the heart and head not to be moved by his sacrifice, at how Carlton redeems himself for a friend and the woman they both love. "This I know," he tells Lucie Manette one afternoon. "I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Will you hold me in your mind as being ardent and sincere in this one thing? Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you." The courage he gives a young seamstress as they prepare to meet their deaths, the drum roll for the blade to descend, his walk up the stairs to the guillotine, those last words as the camera moves up from the crowds, up past the blade and up to the sunlit clouds...well, I was choking back tears. The ending is melodramatic, flawed for me by a syrupy score and by the over-acting of the young woman playing the seamstress. But, I'll tell you, it works.
It's Sydney Carlton who drives the movie. Without a first-rate actor with whom we can empathize and admire, the part would either be awash in self-pity or simply become tiresome. Ronald Colman may seem a bit old fashioned now. We've come to expect our heros to be much more direct, younger and less idealistically romantic. Colman exuded breeding and intelligence even when he was sword-fighting. He made no enemies of men and he gave women someone to dream about. His portrayal of the dissolute, drunken, self-loathing Carlton never falls into simple sloshing about or petulance. He can see himself with a clear eye and a sense of ironic understanding. He makes Carlton not only a man who has wasted his talents and his life, but a man who we are willing to believe is able to find redemption. That redemption is the unexpected love for Lucie Manette that even extends to deliberately sacrificing of himself to save the man Lucie Manette loves. His love for her is that great.
Selznick peopled his film with vivid caricatures. Some work, some don't. The greasy, revolutionary enthusiasts of the guillotine all begin to look and act alike. The haughty, mannered French aristos are so self-centered we wind up kind of admiring them, and the last scenes showing some of them being noble in the face of the blade is a little phony. Still, Basil Rathbone as the Marquis St. Evremonde wearing a white, powdered wig is a sight to enjoy. His concern for his horses, after they've just run down a peasant boy, is touching. "It's extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children," he says, with impeccable Rathbonian diction. "One or the other of you is forever in the way. How do you know what injury you might do to my horses?" And Blanche Yurka as Madame Defarge should make us all extremely wary of women who knit.
A Tale of Two Cities is nothing less than a marvelous, coarsened Selznick "literary" production. It remains an immensely watchable film. If it fails at being "great," it certainly ranks after seventy years as a classic. The DVD transfer looks very good. The extras include a couple of cartoons and a radio adaption of the story."
Timeless Masterpiece that grows better with age
Simon Davis | 06/17/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Of all the fine film versions made of the classic Charles Dicken's tale "A Tale of Two Cities", none can in my opinion compare with this lavish, beautifully wrought version created by the legendary David O. Selznick during his tenure as a producer at MGM in the mid 1930's. All the right elements for creating a film classic are here and combine in a most memorable entertainment experience. A superlative cast, great dialogue, no expense spared on sets, costumes and period flavour and the backing of a perfectionist studio like MGM at its prime, all combine to make "A Tale of Two Cities" a viewing experience to cherish always.David O. Selznick is still best remembered as the producer of the classic "Gone With The Wind", however his work goes much further back at MGM and earlier at RKO where he was responsible for such efforts as "King Kong", "David Copperfield", "The Prisoner of Zenda", and "A Star is Born" among others. Never however did he produce a finer effort than here in his 1935 version of "A Tale of Two Cities". The film provided Ronald Colman with possibly his greatest role as the frivolous lawyer Sydney Carton who in the face of the bloody French Revolution learns about life and duty and makes the ultimate sacrifice for the well being of those he has grown to love. Colman, always a superb actor is a perfect choice as Carton and he brings to the role not only his beautifully trained voice and presentation but also a real understanding of what the character was about both in the earlier scenes as a drunken no good and later in the exciting scenes during the outbreak of the revolution where he develops a sense of the rightness of some things in the face of adversity. The story of "A Tale of Two Cities", is a well known one of two men both in love with the same women with one (Carton) undergoing the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the woman he loves but can never possess. This tale is played out against the colourful but dangerous tapestry of the revolution in France in 1789. Selznick pulled out all the stops with this film which boasts production values unsurpassed at the time. Recreated vividly for the camera are the scenes depicting the storming of the Bastille (involving thousands of extras filmed entirely on the MGM backlot), revolutionary Paris in all its opulence and squalor, the bogus revolutionary tribunals which condemmned thousands of innocent people to the death sentence and most vividly the ghastly executions by the infamous Guillotine. Apart from Ronald Colman's towering central performance the film has many other unforgettable performances which really capture the wonderful richness of Charles Dicken's characters. The beautiful Elizabeth Allan also had one of her best roles as Lucie Manette the object of Carton's affection who falls in love with and marries Charles Darney ( handsome Donald Woods), a naive young French aristocrat who ultimately leds Carton to his destiny in revolutionary Paris when he exchanges places with him on the eve of his execution for being an "enemy" of the Republic. Legendary character actress Edna May Oliver had I firmly believe her best remembered role here as the bossy Miss Pross, the guardian of Lucie who goes through all the visitudes of the revolution to stay by the side of and protect her "Lady bird". She is wonderful in her playing and really is one of the main outstanding elements that make "A Tale of Two Cities" the classic it is. Basil Rathbone plays to the hilt his detestable villian role of the Marquis St. Evermonde who is Charles Darnay's uncle. Working with a totally horrid character , being the superb actor he was, Rathbone manages to create a wonderfully memorable villian that is at the basis of the whole story. The scene of his carriage running over a peasant boy and the Marquise being annoyed that it might have upset his horses is a tragically memorable moment typical of Dicken's pen when writing about the clash of the social classes but to today's viewer like myself it will bring tears to your eyes over the wretched conditions the peasantry lived under at this time. Equally memorable are the actors and actresses playing the peasants in the story. Of all the unforgettable performances of the notorius Madame Defarge over the years none have elicpsed Blanche Yurka's frentic playing of the desperate revolutionary out for revenge. She is both frightening and tragic when one learns of her families fate at the hands of the Marquise St. Evremonde.The vision of her endlessly knitting while people go to their deaths is one of the dramatic highights of this stirring tale. Lucille La Verne (the voice of the wicked witch in Disney's classic "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"), Reginald Owen, Mitchell Lewis and Henry B. Walthall complete the sterling cast and provide the story with a wealth of beautiful characterisations. As a history lesson this version of "A Tale of Two Cities", with its historically accurate look and feel for the times really cannot be bettered. I love it most of all the versions as it shows all the departments of the legendary MGM studios combining in one totally polished production from the great years of Hollywood movie making. A film on this scale could barely be attempted today and it says alot for the genius of David O. Selnick's vision, and the performances by Ronald Colman and supporting cast that it has become "THE" definitive version of Charles Dicken's classic novel. Sit back and allow yourself to be swept away by the colour and tragedy of the French Revolution in David O. Selznick's classic "A Tale of Two Cities"."