A Tale of Two Cities (1958 film) A Tale of Two Cities (1958 film) A Tale of Two Cities is a 1958 British film directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Dirk Bogarde and Dorothy Tutin. It is a period drama based on parts of Charles Dickens' novel "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859). Sydney Carton, a drunken English lawyer, discovers that Charles Darnay, a man he once defended, is a French aristocrat trying to escape the French Revolution. While he envies the man over the love of a woman, Lucie Manette, his conscience is pricked and he resolves to help him escape the guillotine. Ralph Thomas insisted
A Tale of Two Cities republished the chapters as eight monthly sections in green covers. All but three of Dickens's previous novels had appeared only as monthly instalments. The first weekly instalment of "A Tale of Two Cities" ran in the first issue of "All the Year Round" on 30 April 1859. The last ran thirty weeks later, on 26 November. "A Tale of Two Cities" has been cited as one of the best-selling novels of all time. It has been stated to have sold 200 million copies since its first publication, though this figure has been dismissed as "pure fiction" by Oxford University's Peter