Films from A Tale of Two Cities (1926-1980)

Although the novel spawned a number of silent films, notably in 1908, 1911 (producer J. Stuart Blackton), and 1917 (directed by Frank Lloyd, with William Farnum doubling as Carton and Darnay), three 20th Century screen adaptations stand out: the early silent cinematic adaptations were followed by memorable "talkies" in 1926 (starring Martin-Harvey, reprising his stage role as Sydney Carton) in 1935 (starring Ronald Coleman; screenplay by W. P. Liscomb and S. N. Behrman; directed by Jack Conway) and 1958 (starring Dirk Bogarde, Donald Pleasance, and Christopher Lee, with screenplay by T. E. B. Clarke); these were followed by a significant made-for-tv movie in 1980, starring Chris Sarandon as both Darney and Carton. By 1980 apparently 136 film and stage adaptations had appeared, with only twenty-one stage plays between 1860 and 1899.

The first important screen adaptation of the vastly popular stage adaptation The Only Way in a "Prologue" and four acts (which debuted in May, 1899, in London) was the 1926 British drama directed by Herbert Wilcox, and starring John Martin-Harvey (already aged sixty-three, reprising his 1899 stage role) as the brilliant but jaded "lawyer's assistant," Carton, Betty Faire as Lucie Manette, and Madge Stuart as "Mimi," the London street waif hopelessly in love with the hero (a non-Dickensian interpolation). "Here, as so often in the era of the silent film especially, the habits of the stage were transferred to the screen" (Bolton, 395). The shooting script for the 119-minute silent film was directly based on The Only Way (1899), the melodrama which had been staged all around the United Kingdom for twenty-seven years, and fairly faithfully based on Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859). The star of the film, Sir John Martin-Harvey (1863-1944), had been playing the role of Carton in the stage play by Freeman Wills and Frederick Langbridge ever since 1899; indeed, by the time of filming he had already played the part over 3,000 times on stage. At a cost of £24,000, the film was produced at London's Twickenham Studios. A commercial success, the film reportedly took in over £53,000 in its first two years of release alone. This was a particularly notable achievement, given the collapse in British film production between the Slump of 1924 and the passage of the  Cinematograph Films Act 1927 designed to support the British film-making industry.

Cast of the 1926 Cinematic (Silent) Adaptation (Scenario, Arnold Bennett)

The 1935 film A Tale of Two Cities stars Ronald Colman as  Sydney Carton and Elizabeth Allan as Lucie Manette. The significant supporting actors are  Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Lucille La Verne, Blanche Yurka, Henry B. Walthall and Donald Woods. The screen-writers were W. P. Liscomb and S. N. Berman. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Jack Conway, based on the screenplay by W. P. Lipscomb and S. N. Behrman. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film was nominated for the Academy Award for "Best Picture" and "Best Film Editing."

Cast of the 1935 Cinematic Adaptation

As Staples notes, "the script occasionally has some inexplicable eccentricities" (119), including a thoroughly disappointing storming of the Bastille. One of the great virtues of the impeccably-shot 1958 black-and-white film adaptation, aside from a compelling performance by romantic lead Dirk Bogarde as the debauched but brilliant attorney, is its credible backdrops, which include a period chateau at Valency in the Loire Valley as the palatial home of the Marquis (Christopher Lee). "The chateau of the Marquis de St. Evrémonde, with its strutting symbolic peacocks, is superbly represented by the Chateau de Valencay" (Staples, 119). Some effective scenes set in the English countryside were filmed in Buckinghamshire, with the remainder of the interiors being staged at London's Pinewood Studios. The pacing of the action was uniformly excellent in this 117-minute film, which cost £320,000. Rosalie Crutchley's blood-thirsty Madame Defarge was, as The Monthly Film Bulletin opined, "blatantly theatrical but full of gusto." Nevertheless, the production's hallmark remains its accurate historical detailism of sets and costumes. Bogarte, convinced about the high calibre of the Clarke screenplay and the cast, was accordingly disappointed in the box-office since it failed to make the list of the top-grossing films of 1958, perhaps in part because of the initial decision not to film in colour.

With so many admirable performances, and so much first-class photography, why is not the production of Ralph Thomas still more striking? Even after twenty years the exultation of the closing scenes of the Ronald Colman version remain vivcid in memory, and the new film cannot match them. (Staples, 120)

Cast of the 1958 Cinematic Adaptation, Teleplay by E. B. Clarke, Directed by Ralph Thomas

Then came A Tale of Two Cities, a 1980 American historical drama made for television, directed by Jim Goddard and starring Chris Sarandon, who played dual roles as Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, a Frenchman and an Englishman who are both in love with the same woman, Lucie Manette, played by Alice Krige, with veterans Peter Cushing as Dr. Manette and Barry Morse as the Marquis St. Evrémonde. Set in the French Revolution and produced in both England and France, screenwriter John Gay based the John Goddard-directed American Hallmark film (162 minutes running time) closely on the 1859 Charles Dickens historical novel, along with the script by Dickens himself for the Lyceum production, Tom Taylor's two-act adaptation (1860), and Fox Cooper's 1860 stage adaptation The Tale of Two Cities; or, The Incarcerated Prisoner of The Bastille, which debuted at the Victoria Theatre on 7 July 1860.

Cast of the 1980 Made-for-TV Adaptation, Teleplay by John Gay, Directed by Jim Goddard

Related Materials

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip V. "'Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Illustrated: A Critical Reassessment of Hablot Knight Browne's Accompanying Plates." Dickens Studies. 33 (2003): 109-158.

Bolton, H. Philip. "A Tale of Two Cities." Dickens Dramatized. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987. Pp. 395-415.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. Illustrated by Sol Eytinge, Jr. The Diamond Edition. 14 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. Vol. XIII.

_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Hablot Knight Brown. London: Chapman and Hall, 1859.

_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by John McLenan (33 illustrations). Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1859. 2 vols.

_______. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. VIII.

Erickson, Glenn. "Review of A Tale of Two Cities (1958)." (2 PAL DVDs). Viavision (Australia). https://trailersfromhell.com/a-tale-of-two-cities-1958/.

Feaster, Felicia. "A Tale of Two Cities (1958)." Turner Classic Movies. tcm.com/articles/84749/a-tale-of-two-cities-1958. Posted 28 October 2004. Accessed 7 December 2025.

Morley, Malcolm. "The Stage Story of A Tale of Two Cities." Dickensian 51 (1955): 34-35.

Rock, Alex. "The Only Way." The 15th British Silent Film Festival: BFI, De Montfort University, Leicester (19 April 2012, held at Cambridge), cites a contemporary review in The Kinematograph Weekly 3 Sept., 1925: pp. 65-66.

Staples, Leslie C. "The New Film Version of A Tale of Two Cities." Dickensian 54 (1957): 119-120.

Wilcox, Hebert (producer). The Only Way, based in the stage play by Freeman Wills. National Talkies. 1925. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1420669/credits.html. Accessed 10 December 2025.


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Created 11 December 2025