A Tale of Two Cities (1958)

As film popularity goes, A Tale of Two Cities is a mid-level Dickens novel. Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol have been filmed so many times that it just isn't Christmas without one of them coming out.

Bulkier novels like Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, and Little Dorrit have been relegated to the small screen. But while A Tale of Two Cities is easily Dickens's best-selling novel (according to Wikipedia, the second best-selling novel of all-time), its cinematic footprint is fairly meager. The last Hollywood version was this one, in 1958, and it was an uneven remake of the 1935 version.

As plots go, it's far easier to summarize than the average Dickens, and with its romance, action, and melodrama, it's prime stuff for an epic film. (In fact, there is a new version in the works.)

Hey! Young Christopher Lee!

The story opens with a carriage struggling up a muddy hillside in the night. A rider approaches through the mist, crying out for one of the passengers, a Mr Jarvis Lorry. The coachmen check with their clients - it's not the handsome, sardonic lawyer, Sydney Carton (Dirk Bogarde), but a fussy banker (Cecil Parker).

After receiving the odd message ("Recalled to life?"), Mr. Lorry continues to Dover, where he informs young Lucie Manette (Dorothy Tutin) that her long-lost father, Dr. Manette (Stephen Murray) has been found alive. After eighteen years in the Bastille, he has been released to some kindly friends: the Defarges.

The Ladykillers (1955) - Movie Review

I grew up watching Miss Marple - not the new, politically correct, sexed-up series - but what we call the authorized version starring Joan Hickson. Hickson was a truly amazing actress, exceedingly subtle and very convincing. It's even more impressive since she really was in her nineties while filming the series. Of course, she was Dame Agatha's pick, and the queen's, but if you want to disagree, please go elsewhere.

Like Joan Hickson, Katie Johnson is one of those great little old ladies that completely disappears into her character and never needs to do something vulgar to be interesting. She had been acting since 1894, if that tells you anything, and won a BAFTA for this role. Her dainty, pink-clad Mrs. Wilberforce steals the film away from the ladykillers themselves, though they include such icons as Alec Guinness, a very young Peter Sellers, and Herbert Lom. Not that they give poor performances. They're excellent, their sleaziness contrasting perfectly with Mrs. Wilberforce's Victorian sensibilities.

Mrs. Wilberforce lives with her parrots in a lopsided house in London, and is looking to let her upper room. Appears "Professor" Marcus, a creepy, cunning Alec Guinness with enormous false teeth, completely removed from the classy Obi-Wan Kenobi, the only role for which he will (rather unfairly) be remembered. Professor Marcus quickly begins to entertain his friends, a group of "amateur musicians." There's the Major (Cecil Parker), One-Round (Danny Green), Louis (Lom) and Harry (Sellers.) It's not much of a spoiler that they are in fact a group of vicious bank robbers, who have concocted a plan that places the oblivious Mrs. Wilberforce right at the center of their machinations.