You see them here in a 1938 film of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: Lucie Manette and Sydney Carton . That is the young Ronald Coleman playing Carton and I don’t remember who is playing Lucie. It doesn’t matter because she is a stick anyway. She is very pretty if you like a blank face and 1930′s penciled eyebrows.
For strong female acting, take a look at Madame Defarge.
The two cities of Dickens’ tale are London and Paris. The Paris of this film is not airbrushed but strong, violent, overly dramatic. The London is quaint, with carolers in the street and gentility beyond belief. For that reason, the film comes alive, becomes “Hollywood,” only when the scene moves to Paris.
The mob storms the Bastille.
I decided to see this film (again) after recently reading A Tale of Two Cities (again) and being impressed by Dickens’ adroit handling of narrative in the manner of a tale. In the opening scenes I had to adjust to the rather stagey acting and mugging, a holdover from silent film days. It works rather well from the beginning for Carton’s dissolute character. In fact, as a drunk, I find him rather restrained. It turns up the heat wonderfully when the mob gets going in Paris. Here, in contrast to the dignified trial shown earlier in London, the jurors demand the deaths of innocent people.
Dickens hated injustice and the humiliations of poverty, whether in England or France, but he hated the mob and the terror more. The movie does too.
That sounds like an interesting read, I’ll have to add it to my list. We could use someone like Dickens in our time. An interesting thought occurs to me that it would be cool to have someone write an updated version of this and other tales by Dickens, for those of us who would prefer reading less description.
I must have read The Tale of Two Cities as a teenager. I was motivated to read it again by the Arab spring and the scenes on TV of the crowds of protestors in Cairo. It reminded me of other protests and crowds and I tried to remember how Dickens had handled it. Dickens was horrified by how peaceful protest could transform into mob justice.
There’s a book by Ann Coulter called Demonic that talks about mob justice. Granted, it’s from a very skewed political point of view, but she makes very good points about how dangerous mobs can be.
Fascinating! I hadn’t seen the movie but it’s on my list now.
It’s available from Netflix. I believe there are other versions of The Tale of Two Cities, but this one is a classic.
I definitely should read this. I recently read a novella by Alexandre Dumas that was set during French terror and it was treated as horror / gore / supernatural. I’d love to see the social angle as well.
Nancy, I read a lot of Dickens when I was young (very young) but I think A Tale of Two Cities came later for me. Even so I remember it as it being less distinctive than the other novels, the characters less well defined. Is this in any way a fair assessment, or should I read it again?
It doesn’t seem to me to be typical Dickens. The highly individualized characters are missing. Carton is perhaps the best, as well as a few of the minor characters, but Darnay and Lucie are puppets. This works for me because this is a different style of narrative, a “tale,” as the title clearly suggests. Perhaps it is more like A Christmas Carol than such major works as David Copperfield or Bleak House. The first half of the book, mostly in England, is rather tame. The action and emotional force pick up when the scene shifts to France. Dickens is very much making a point here. Of course he does in Bleak House also, but there he knew his material more directly; here, he is depending more on Carlyle (or so I understand).