Dickens given the MGM Hollywood treatment doesn't compare to the two David Lean classic adaptations of the forties; the adaptation is by W.R. Lipscomb and S.N. Berhman. To be fair it doesn't quite have the same emotions and complications as the other two, and Selznick himself, when comparing it to his earlier adaptation of David Copperfield, felt it didn't have anywhere near the same number of great, rounded characters. Still, it's definitely given the big Selznick touch and the end result is exciting and tragic enough, without somehow quite hitting the nail on the head. For example, the storming of the Bastille scene, researched and written by Val Lewton, is probably historically accurate without being the most exciting moment. And on the eve of the prisoner's execution, there's somewhat too much weeping and wailing before Colman leaps into action - to paraphrase John Madden, the film is dawdling where it needs to motor.
Interesting for the way in which it's presented that the revolutionaries would then murder anyone who had anything to do with the aristocrats, even servants.
Good cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan (I know - who? But she is in Went the Day Well?), Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Blanche Yurka (I thought she was good - had something of the intensity of Pamela Brown - but perhaps a shade too theatrical in the court scene), Henry Walthall (long imprisoned father), Donald Woods (Rathbone's son), Walter Catlett (the fraudster), Fritz Leiber, H.B. Warner, Mitchell Lewis, Billy Bevan.
The wine shop gave Oliver T Marsh photographic problems with the action both in the interior and outside in the street. He used ten varying shades of amber glass on the windows for the time of day. The Paris scenes were an ingenious mixture of sets, matte painting and miniatures.
The music oddly uses bits of Chopin, O Come All Ye Faithful and La Marseillaise!
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