A Tale of Two Cities
Tags: romantic

Plot synopsis:
=== Book the First: Recalled to Life ===
Dickens's famous opening sentence introduces the universal approach of the book, the French Revolution, and the drama depicted within:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
In 1775, a man flags down the nightly mail-coach on its route from London to Dover. The man is Jerry Cruncher, an employee of Tellson's Bank in London; he carries a message for Jarvis Lorry, a passenger and one of the bank's managers. Mr. Lorry sends Jerry back to deliver a cryptic response to the bank: "Recalled to Life." The message refers to Alexandre Manette, a French physician who has been released from the Bastille after an 18-year imprisonment. Once Mr. Lorry arrives in Dover, he meets with Dr. Manette's daughter Lucie and her governess, Miss Pross. Lucie has believed her father to be dead, and faints at the news that he is alive; Mr. Lorry takes her to France to reunite with him.
In the Paris neighborhood of Saint Antoine, Dr. Manette has been given lodgings by his former servant Ernest Defarge and his wife Therese, owners of a wine shop. Mr. Lorry and Lucie find him in a small garret, where he spends much of his time making shoes—a skill he learned in prison, which he uses to distract himself from his thoughts, and which has become an obsession for him. He does not recognize Lucie at first but does eventually see the resemblance to her mother through her blue eyes and long golden hair, a strand of which he found on his sleeve when he was imprisoned. Mr. Lorry and Lucie take him back to England.
=== Book the Second: The Golden Thread ===
In 1780, French émigré Charles Darnay is on trial for treason against the British Crown. The key witnesses against him are two British spies, John Barsad and Roger Cly, who claim that Darnay gave information about British troops in North America to the French. Barsad states that he would recognize Darnay anywhere, at which point Darnay's defense counsel, Stryver, directs attention to Sydney Carton, a barrister present in the courtroom who looks almost identical to him. With Barsad's eyewitness testimony now discredited, Darnay is acquitted.
In Paris, the hated and abusive Marquis St. Evrémonde orders his carriage driven recklessly fast through the crowded streets, hitting and killing the child of a peasant, Gaspard. The Marquis throws a coin to Gaspard to compensate him for his loss, and Defarge comforts the distraught father, having observed the incident. As the Marquis's coach drives off, the coin is flung back into his coach by an unknown hand, enraging the Marquis.
Arriving at his country château, the marquis meets with his nephew and heir, Darnay. Out of disgust with his aristocratic family, Darnay has shed his real surname and adopted an anglicized version of his mother's maiden name, D'Aulnais. The following passage records the Marquis' principles of aristocratic superiority:
"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend," observed the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof," looking up to it, "shuts out the sky."
That night, Gaspard, who followed the Marquis to his château by riding on the underside of the carriage, stabs and kills him in his sleep. Gaspard leaves a note on the knife saying, "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES." After nearly a year on the run, he is caught and hanged above the village well.
In London, Darnay gets Dr. Manette's permission to wed Lucie; but Carton confesses his love to Lucie as well. Knowing she will not love him in return, Carton promises to "embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you". Stryver, the barrister who defended Darnay and with whom Carton has a working relationship, considers proposing marriage to Lucie, but Mr. Lorry talks him out of the idea.
On the morning of the marriage, Darnay reveals his real name and family lineage to Dr. Manette, a detail he had been asked to withhold until that day. In consequence, Dr. Manette reverts to his obsessive shoemaking after the couple leave for their honeymoon. He returns to sanity before their return, and the whole incident is kept secret from Lucie. Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross destroy the shoemaking bench and tools, which Dr. Manette had brought with him from Paris.
As time passes in England, Lucie and Charles begin to raise a family, a son (who dies in childhood) and a daughter, little Lucie. Mr. Lorry finds a second home and a sort of family with the Darnays. Stryver marries a rich widow with three children and becomes even more insufferable as his ambitions begin to be realized. Carton, even though he seldom visits, is accepted as a close friend of the family and becomes a special favourite of little Lucie.
In July 1789, the Defarges help to lead the storming of the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny. Defarge enters Dr. Manette's former cell, "One Hundred and Five, North Tower," and searches it thoroughly. Throughout the countryside, local officials and other representatives of the aristocracy are dragged from their homes to be killed, and the St. Evrémonde château is burned to the ground.
In 1792, Mr. Lorry decides to travel to Paris to collect important documents from the Tellson's branch in that city and bring them to London for safekeeping against the chaos of the French Revolution. Darnay intercepts a letter written by Gabelle, one of his uncle's servants who has been imprisoned by the revolutionaries, pleading for the Marquis to help secure his release. Without telling his family or revealing his position as the new Marquis, Darnay sets out for Paris.
=== Book the Third: The Track of a Storm ===
Shortly after Darnay arrives in Paris, he is denounced for being an emigrated aristocrat from France and jailed in La Force Prison. Dr. Manette, Lucie, little Lucie, Jerry, and Miss Pross travel to Paris and meet Mr. Lorry to try to free Darnay. A year and three months pass, and Darnay is finally tried.
Dr. Manette, viewed as a hero for his imprisonment in the Bastille, testifies on Darnay's behalf at his trial. Darnay is released, only to be arrested again later that day. A new trial begins on the following day, under new charges brought by the Defarges and a third individual who is soon revealed as Dr. Manette. He had written an account of his imprisonment at the hands of Darnay's father and hidden it in his cell; Defarge found it while searching the cell during the storming of the Bastille.
While running errands with Jerry, Miss Pross is amazed to see her long-lost brother Solomon, but he does not want to be recognized in public. Carton suddenly steps forward from the shadows and identifies Solomon as Barsad, one of the spies who tried to frame Darnay for treason at his trial in 1780. Jerry remembers that he has seen Solomon with Cly, the other key witness at the trial and that Cly had faked his death to escape England. By threatening to denounce Solomon to the revolutionary tribunal as a Briton, Carton blackmails him into helping with a plan.
At the tribunal, Defarge identifies Darnay as the nephew of the dead Marquis St. Evrémonde and reads Dr. Manette's letter. Defarge had learned Darnay's lineage from Solomon during the latter's visit to the wine shop several years earlier. The letter describes Dr. Manette's imprisonment at the hands of Darnay's father and uncle for trying to report their crimes against a peasant family. Darnay's uncle had become infatuated with a girl, whom he had kidnapped and raped; despite Dr. Manette's attempt to save her, she died. The uncle killed her husband by working him to death, and her father died from a heart attack on being informed of what had happened. Before he died defending the family honour, the brother of the raped peasant had hidden the last member of the family, his younger sister. The Evrémonde brothers imprisoned Dr. Manette after he refused their offer of a bribe to keep quiet. He concludes his letter by condemning the Evrémondes, "them and their descendants, to the last of their race." Dr. Manette is horrified, but he is not allowed to retract his statement. Darnay is sent to the Conciergerie and sentenced to be guillotined the next day.
Carton wanders into the Defarges' wine shop, where he overhears Madame Defarge talking about her plans to have both Lucie and little Lucie condemned. Carton discovers that Madame Defarge was the surviving sister of the peasant family savaged by the Evrémondes. At night, when Dr. Manette returns, shattered after spending the day in many failed attempts to save Darnay's life, he falls into an obsessive search for his shoemaking implements. Carton urges Lorry to flee Paris with Lucie, her father, and Little Lucie, asking them to leave as soon as he joins them in the coach.
Shortly before the executions are to begin, Solomon sneaks Carton into the prison for a visit with Darnay. The two men trade clothes, and Carton drugs Darnay and has Solomon carry him out. Carton has decided to be executed in his place and has given his own identification papers to Mr. Lorry to present on Darnay's behalf. Following Carton's earlier instructions, the family and Mr. Lorry flee to England with the unconscious Darnay, but not before receiving a note from Carton which allows them to pass the France border.
Meanwhile, Madame Defarge, armed with a dagger and pistol, goes to the Manette residence, hoping to apprehend Lucie and little Lucie and bring them in for execution. However, the family is already gone and Miss Pross stays behind to confront and delay Madame Defarge. As the two women struggle, Madame Defarge's pistol discharges, killing her and causing Miss Pross to go permanently deaf from noise and shock.
The novel concludes with the guillotining of Carton. As he is waiting to board the tumbril, he is approached by a seamstress, also condemned to death, who mistakes him for Darnay (with whom she had been imprisoned earlier) but realizes the truth once she sees him at close range. Awed by his unselfish courage and sacrifice, she asks to stay close to him and he agrees. Upon their arrival at the guillotine, Carton comforts her, telling her that their ends will be quick but that there is no Time or Trouble "in the better land where ... [they] will be mercifully sheltered", and she is able to meet her death in peace. Carton's unspoken last thoughts are prophetic:
I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance [a lieutenant of Madame Defarge], the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man [Mr. Lorry], so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both.
I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Review: Highlights.
While it is impossible to do justice to Dickens' sprawling novel in 20 minutes, Vitagraph makes a stab at it with this series of scenes in little more than tableaux format.
Good costumes, good backgrounds and excellent actors do their best, but stick with the 1935 version directed by Jack Conway.While this would seem to be, from the cast list, an all-star version -- including a very young Mabel Normand -- you should realize Vitagraph worked its actors hard -- starring in one picture, helping to fill out a crowd scene in the next.
Still, you might want to play "spot the star" with this one..
"A Tale of Two Cities"...in 21 minutes!!!.
This very early film version of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" is pretty bad considering they only took 21 minutes to tell the story, though you have to put it in context.
For 1911, this is actually a full-length story and no one yet made 90-120 minute films.
Versions of other stories such as "Frankenstein" were likewise extremely short and confusing--and best watched by folks who already knew the stories.
Additionally, seeing obviously painted backgrounds was the norm for the day and all the nice costumes and attempts to make it look good actually would indicate that this was a prestige film...with a higher than usual budget!
So, don't be too quick to dismiss this picture...it's really not that bad considering.If you want to see the film, it's currently on YouTube and would best be watched on your small computer screen and not on a television using a BlueRay player because in the latter case, the film is very blurry and the intertitle cards are hard to read..
The first of a series of three reels adequately reproducing Dickens' favorite story.
It is unnecessary to go over the story.
Probably most who will see the picture know its main features at least.
The first reel takes the audience up to seizure of the peasant girl and the killing of her brother, her death, the visit to Dr. Manette to be a party to the crime, which results in his arrest and imprisonment in the Bastille and the consequent sufferings in a dungeon.
The story is complete in itself, but the other two reels which go with it complete the story as Dickens wrote it.
Probably most readers have formed some conception of the appearance of the different characters.
In this picture they undoubtedly have an adequate reproduction of the story, with the principal personages faithfully depicted.
The staging is little short of sumptuous.
The staging is little short of sumptuous.
There is shown a care in the attention to details which stamps the picture as an unusually faithful reproduction and affords opportunity for those who have read and loved Dickens in the books to see his story move before them, much, perhaps, as it moved before him during its composition.
Without being an expert upon Dickens, it seems safe to say that this production of one of his most famous stories will go down in motion picture history as one of the most notable of photoplay productions of the beginning of the year.
- The Moving Picture World, March 4, 1911The second part of the three reel release of this great story.
This film introduces Lucy, Sidney Carton, the hero of the tale, De Farge and Darnay.
The scene changes from the turbulence of Paris to the quiet, homelike attractions of London.
The complications which beset these characters are faithfully reproduced.
Of course, it must be understood that it is impossible to reproduce everything that is described in the book, but the selections have been made with care, and are indicative of a thorough understanding of the necessities of the story.
The main features are sufficiently emphasized to serve as a guide in carrying the audience along, and their knowledge of the story itself will supply any deficiencies.
Toward the last there are rumblings from Paris, with its unrest and turbulence, but the main feature of the picture is the quiet of the homes of London and the development of a portion of the love story which is included.
It seems safe to say that those who see this film, in conjunction with the one which was released before, and the one to follow, will acquire a new impression of Dickens and will appreciate more fully than ever before the importance of the motion picture as showing the beauties of a good story.
Managers will do well if they use these films together, though each one tells a story by itself, which has its interest.
- The Moving Picture World, March 11, 1911The third and closing film in this series of remarkable reproductions.
This picture takes the audience to Paris and shows them the mob at work destroying property and murdering Royalists and all suspected of being in sympathy with them.
The story is followed closely in the main, the principal scenes being shown in strong contrast to the quiet, homelike scenes of the former film.
It is here that Carton displays the act of heroism which will forever make him one of the greatest characters in fiction, the sacrifice of his life to save Darnay, who has been arrested and imprisoned because he is a relative of a Royalist, and will ultimately suffer upon the guillotine.
The scene when the condemned prisoners are going to the guillotine in the tumbrel cart, and Carton comforts the poor little seamstress condemned to die with him, is dramatic, and holds the attention so closely that the audience sits with tense nerves throughout the scene.
But, after all, even though the turbulence of the murderous mob constitutes the theme of the picture, the closing scenes, where Carton dies for his friend lifts it above the ordinary level and makes it one of the greatest pictures of the month.
The three should be shown in conjunction.
In that way the story unfolds itself in consecutive order, and the connection is clearly perceived.
The Vitagraph people have performed a notable achievement in presenting this story in such excellent form.
It is a year when Dickens is being studied and considered more than for a long time, and such a contribution as this is a help, not alone to students of Dickens, but to the thousands who have, for one reason or another, perhaps, lost sight of his marvelous faculty for storytelling.
- The Moving Picture World, March 11, 1911.
" Impressive 1911 A Tale Of Two Cities ".
This is really a surprisingly good production by the Vitagraph to bring the Charles Dickens 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities to life on film for early movie goers.
A very impressive cast of film performers from the early silent era that includes John Bunny, Maurice Costello, Florence Turner, Norma Talmadge, Anitia Stewart, Lillian Walker and a very young Mabel Normand all performing finely in period costumes.
The story is told with a rapid succession of scenes that are amazingly well paced and the authentic looking back-grounds along with the many extra players, all helps to provide the appropriate atmosphere.
Very historically interesting and entertaining, this 1911 film is great for silent film enthusiasts who appreciate the art of early silent cinema..
Speeds by at the rate of knots, but it is TINTED!.
This film originally ran about 36 minutes.
I say "about" because in 1911, the actual running time of the movie's original three reels in cinemas depended upon the speed of the projectionist – and most projectionists took it upon themselves to crank slowly through the scenes they liked and speed up the less interesting passages.
The demands of the theatre's orchestra or pianist also had to be considered – along with the cinema's manager or proprietor who wanted to squeeze in as many screenings per day as possible.
When the 16mm rights were acquired by Kodak, it was mercilessly condensed to two spools running a total of 21 or 22 minutes.
However, this Kodascope cutdown did retain all the movie's original tints, and it's certainly a treat to see all these colored tints preserved on the Grapevine DVD disc, even though the scenes now flash by at such a speed, it would be hard for a party of Martians who were unfamiliar with Dickens to follow the plot.
We can all do that okay, but the scenes flash by so fast, it's hard to appreciate all the good work of actors like Maurice Costello's Carton, Florence Turner's Lucie Manette and William Shea's Jarvis Lorry, let alone Norma Talmadge's girl on the tumbrel.
This tinted Kodascope cutdown is now available on an excellent Grapevine DVD, on the same disc as the 1917 version.