JohnHowardReid Review of A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities (1911)

Speeds by at the rate of knots, but it is TINTED!

[7/10 · 30 July 2014]

This film originally ran about 36 minutes. I say "about" because in 1911, the actual running time of the movie's original three reels in cinemas depended upon the speed of the projectionist – and most projectionists took it upon themselves to crank slowly through the scenes they liked and speed up the less interesting passages. The demands of the theatre's orchestra or pianist also had to be considered – along with the cinema's manager or proprietor who wanted to squeeze in as many screenings per day as possible. When the 16mm rights were acquired by Kodak, it was mercilessly condensed to two spools running a total of 21 or 22 minutes. However, this Kodascope cutdown did retain all the movie's original tints, and it's certainly a treat to see all these colored tints preserved on the Grapevine DVD disc, even though the scenes now flash by at such a speed, it would be hard for a party of Martians who were unfamiliar with Dickens to follow the plot. We can all do that okay, but the scenes flash by so fast, it's hard to appreciate all the good work of actors like Maurice Costello's Carton, Florence Turner's Lucie Manette and William Shea's Jarvis Lorry, let alone Norma Talmadge's girl on the tumbrel. This tinted Kodascope cutdown is now available on an excellent Grapevine DVD, on the same disc as the 1917 version.