I've never read Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, but the 1935 adaptation makes me want to, which is perhaps the best compliment I can give it. The book is too big for a two-hour movie, and you can feel it when the action decides to skip ahead and cover the missing parts with on-screen text, but it doesn't skimp on what Dickens does best and we get a lot of nice characterization, memorable scenes enlivened by Dickens the Humorist, adding some lighter moments to rather dark subject matter, the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, but also poignancy, and I fully admit the ending got to me. Ronald Coleman as Carton is incredibly good and worth the price of admission alone. You also get Basil Rathbone as an evil aristocrat, Blanche Yurka as a villainous revolutionary (a tale of two evils), and to my delighted surprise, Edna May Oliver doing a bit of action! Oh and you know, a staging of the taking of the Bastille, etc. It's got its epic qualities as well.

I disagree. This is superior to the 1958 version.

This one wasn't bad.