Review of A Tale of Two Cities

Alas, this version is FAR FROM FAITHFUL. This version is so mixed up that any child who watched it in an effort to fake their way through a report without reading the tome would fail. Parts of the story are out of order, characters consistently appear in places they do not appear in the text, and Lucie does not meet Darnay on the Dover Mail in the text. Instead, she meets him on the packet from Calais, when she returns to England with her father after collecting him in St. Antoine. This misguided interpretation has her seeing Sydney long before the trial that opens Book the Second and mistaking him for Charles. Those are just a few of the large number of inaccuracies found throughout the film. As an English teacher who holds this as one of her favorite books of all time, I wish I had never watched this version. Go watch the one from 1935 or even the Masterpiece Theatre version from the 1989. No film interpretation is ever spot on, but those two have far fewer inconsistencies than this one.