A Tale of Two Cities (1980 film) Cards. A Tale of Two Cities (1980 film) A Tale of Two Cities is a 1980 American made-for-television historical drama film directed by Jim Goddard and starring Chris Sarandon, who plays dual roles as two characters who are in love with the same woman. It is based on the Charles Dickens novel of the same name set in the French Revolution. Dickens' London-lawyer hero (Chris Sarandon) makes the ultimate sacrifice for the woman he loves in Paris during the Reign of Terror. Producer Norman Rosemont specialised in adaptations of classic novels. Most of the $5 million budget came from Hallmark
A Tale of Two Cities distracted ... that the rivers of the South were encumbered with bodies of the violently drowned by night..." Later a crowd is "swelling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets ... the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled them away." During the fight with Miss Pross, Madame Defarge clings to her with "more than the hold of a drowning woman". Commentators on the novel have noted the irony that Madame Defarge is killed by her own gun, and perhaps Dickens means by the above quote to suggest that such vicious vengefulness as Madame Defarge's will eventually destroy even its