Nonureva Really Surprised!

2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

peter-woodhart I'm old now, and I've been watching films (movies!) since the 1940's!This black and white 1958 version of 'A Tale of Two Cities' is a beautiful love story. Although we owe the wonderful Charles Dickens all the credit for creating such an outstanding act of bravery by Sydney Carton, I defy anyone to suggest a better actor than Dirk Bogarde to play this part.Dirk Bogarde starts the film as a drunk who has nothing to live for. Through his love for Lucie, he learns to redeem himself. The words he dictates at the end of the film to Charles Darney in the prison, 'I knew it was not in your nature.....' are real tearjerkers.I watch the film at least once a year and always find it a moving experience.Highly recommendedPS The haunting music by Richard Addinsell is fabulous.....

bkoganbing 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.

Brooksider100 Pretty boy Bogarde or movie star Coleman? I always thought Dirk Bogarde (Bogarde NOT Bogarte) was a lightweight actor with occasional flashes of excellence.I always thought Ronald Coleman was a great movie star who could act a bit.Having said that I prefer Coleman's version of 'Lost Horizon' to the others and I think his performance as Carton shades Bogarde. Bogarde's best performances were in 'The Night Porter' and 'The Victim'There was, however, a version of this movie (maybe made for TV) with John Mills playing Carton - easily the best.

sandra small 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.