The film without the cuts. And the book itself.
A banker escorts young Lucie to Paris to reclaim the father she thought dead — a doctor buried alive for eighteen years in the Bastille.
Lucie Manette
A golden-haired daughter whose tenderness gathers broken lives back toward light.
London
A fogged, watchful city where banks, courts, and guarded homes keep their secrets.
How can an age promise salvation while rushing whole nations toward ruin?
Read →The Best and Worst of Times
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
The narrator refuses to tell you whether this was a good age or a bad one, and that refusal is the whole point. Every grand claim he makes he immediately cancels with its opposite, so that by the end you cannot say anything definite except that people at the time were sure they knew. Then he quietly turns the joke on his own readers: this age was "so far like the present period" that the loud voices of 1775 sound exactly like the loud voices of Dickens's own day, each insisting the world had never been so wonderful or so terrible. And the men who run England and France, guarding their "loaves and fishes," are the most certain of all that nothing will ever change, which is the surest sign it is about to.
Recalled to Life
A banker escorts young Lucie to Paris to reclaim the father she thought dead — a doctor buried alive for eighteen years in the Bastille.
Dover Mail Coach
Strangers who trust no one, and a message summoning a lost man back to life.
Doctor Alexandre Manette
A recovered prisoner whose white hair and shoemaker’s bench reveal that freedom is not the same as healing.
A Tale of Two Cities
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