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[the mercenary troops are marching through Paris]
Jacques ll6: How many thousands of these foreign soldiers are they bringing in?
Madame Defarge: It doesn't matter how many; it will do them no good.
The Vengeance: It will do them no good. Ha!
Madame Defarge: The starving people of Paris might wait a long time before rising up to fight French soldiers; but against hired, foreign troops... any day... any hour...
The Vengeance: Any minute!
Lucie Manette: You know, Sydney, sometimes it's the part of a friend to criticize, too.
Sydney Carton: Oh, when there's any hope of reformation, yes; but with me, it's hopeless.
Lucie Manette: I don't believe it. I refuse to believe it.
Sydney Carton: Oh, I admit that once when... when I first knew you... the sight of you and your home stirred all shadows that I thought had died out of me. I had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, fighting out the abandoned fight... a dream that ended in nothing - but you inspired it.
Lucie Manette: Must it end in nothing?
Sydney Carton: I'm afraid so. But for that inspiration, and for that dream, I shall always be grateful to you, Lucie.
Lucie Manette: I feel in you still such possibilities.
Sydney Carton: No, they'll never be realized. I'm like one who died young.
Lucie Manette: I'll never give up my hopes for you, Sydney. Never.
Sydney Carton: I know myself better. But, this I know, too: I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Will you hold me in your mind as being ardent and sincere in this one thing? Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you?
Lucie Manette: Thank you, Sydney. God grant that it may never be necessary.
[Madame DeFarge has come looking for Lucie and the child. Miss Pross bars her way out]
Miss Pross: Oh no you don't!
Madame Defarge: Let me pass.
Madame Defarge: Never! I know what you want. I know what you're after. And thank heaven I'm put here to stop you - for stop you I will!
Madame Defarge: In the name of the Republic...
Miss Pross: In the name of no one, you evil woman. You've killed many innocent people. No doubt you'll kill many more; but my ladybird you shall never touch.
Madame Defarge: No? Do you know who I am?
Miss Pross: You might - from your appearance - be the wife of Lucifer; yet you shall not get the better of me. I'm an Englishwoman! I'm your match!
Madame Defarge: Pig, get out of my way or I'll break you in pieces.
Miss Pross: Break away, then. I don't care an English tuppence for myself; but I know that the longer I keep you here... the greater hope there is for my ladybird.
[they fight]
[after Darnay is acquitted, Jarvis Lorry, Jr. shakes his hand]
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: My boy, never for a moment did I doubt your innocence.
Sydney Carton: So, Mr. Lorry, respectable men of business may speak to Mr. Darnay in public, now he's acquitted.
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: You have mentioned that before, sir. We men of business must think of the house we serve more than ourselves.
Sydney Carton: Yes, yes. Banking, of course, imposes its own restrictions and silences.
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: And, indeed, sir, I don't know that it is any of your business.
Sydney Carton: Oh, bless you, I have no business.
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: And if you had, sir, perhaps you would attend to it.
Sydney Carton: Lord love you, no I wouldn't!
Sydney Carton: It's a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It's a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.
Miss Pross: Mr. Carton, the infant has expressed a desire to say good night to you.
Sydney Carton: The infant's desire shall be gratified immediately, Prossy.
[he goes]
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: I suppose it's none of my business, but I wouldn't allow that fellow to handle a child of mine.
Miss Pross: As to that, you haven't got one... and from the looks of you, you're not likely to have one.
Title Card: Unheralded, Unexpected, Frenchmen in uniform joined Frenchmen in rags... and rebellion turned to revolution
C.J. Stryver: [in court] Mr. Barsad, have you ever been kicked?
Barsad: Certainly not.
C.J. Stryver: Come, come, Mr. Barsad, weren't you one time kicked downstairs?
Barsad: Well, once I was kicked at the top of the stairs, but I fell down the stairs of my own will and wolition.
[after the Marquis' coach runs over and kills a peasant child, he gets out of the coach and speaks to the onlookers]
Marquis St. Evremonde: It's extraordinary to me that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is forever in the way. How do you know what injury you might do to my horses?
Sydney Carton: Yours is a long life to look back on, Mr. Lorry?
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: I'm 78.
Sydney Carton: Long life... useful one.
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: A solitary bachelor - nobody would weep for me.
Sydney Carton: Wouldn't SHE weep for you?
[refers to Lucie]
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: Yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I said.
Sydney Carton: It is a thing to thank God for, isn't it. Tell me, if you looked back on that long life and saw that you had gained neither love, gratitude nor respect of any human being... it would be a bitter reflection, wouldn't it?
Jarvis Lorry Jr.: Why yes, surely.
Knitting woman (tricoteuse): [the guilloutine strikes once more] I lost a stitch. Damned Aristocrats!
Description
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...." Charles Dickens' tale of love and tumult during the French Revolution comes to the screen in a sumptuous film version by the producer famed for nurturing sprawling literary works: David O. Selznick (David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind). Ronald Colman (The Prisoner of Zenda) stars as Sydney Carton ? sardonic, dissolute, a wastrel...and destined to redeem himself in an act of courageous sacrifice. "It's a far, far better thing I do than I've ever done," Carton muses at that defining moment. This is far, far better filmmaking, too: a Golden Era marvel of uncanny performances top to bottom, eye-filling crowd scenes (the storming of the Bastille, thronged courtrooms, an eerie festival of public execution) and lasting emotional power. Revolution is in the air!

DVD Features:
Other:Oscar?-Nominated Short Audioscopicks 2 Classic Cartoons: Hey, Hey Fever and Honeyland Audio-Only Bonus: Radio Show Adaptation Starring Colman
Theatrical Trailer



Amazon.com
Ronald Colman isn't even on screen for the most famous lines of his career ("It's a far, far better thing I do..."), but such is the power of the moment and the performance that everybody remembers it anyway. A Tale of Two Cities was the follow-up for producer David O. Selznick and high-class studio MGM to their hit adaptation of another Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations. While not scaling the heights of that impeccable production, Tale gives a tight, straightforward reading of Dickens' story of the French Revolution. Colman plays the drunken romantic Sydney Carton, who pines for the lovely Lucie Manette (Elizabeth Allan) even though she marries former French aristocrat Charles Darnay (Donald Woods). Meanwhile, back in Paris, the Revolution erupts, and Darnay is fated for the guillotine... perhaps. Along with Colman's expert study in melancholy, the film is crammed with fragrant supporting players, such as Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, and the uniquely unsettling Blanche Yurka as the endlessly-knitting Madame Defarge. In a handful of scenes, Basil Rathbone makes the Marquis de Evremonde the quintessence of clueless privilege ("With what I get from these peasants, I can hardly afford to pay my perfume bill"). Journeyman director Jack Conway doesn't have the lovely touch that George Cukor brought to Copperfield, but Selznick hired him because "the picture is melodrama, it must have pace and it must 'pack a wallop.'" It still does. Footnote to film history: Selznick's assistant, Val Lewton, supervised the Revolutionary montage, and hired director Jacques Tourneur for the job; later they would team up on Lewton's great run of B-horror pictures, beginning with Cat People. --Robert Horton