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 true story related by Voltaire in a famous pamphlet, "An Account of the Death of the Chevalier de la Barre".) So riled is Dickens at the brutality of English law that he depicts some of its punishments with sarcasm: "the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action". He faults the law for not seeking reform: "Whatever is, is right" is the dictum of the Old Bailey. The gruesome portrayal of quartering highlights its atrocity. Dickens wants his readers to be careful that the same revolution that so damaged France will not happen in Britain,