Basil is at his evil best here as Marquis St. Evremonde, your sterotypical (but deliciously so) cruel and unfeeling French aristocrat. After his coach runs over a small boy, his response is to complain about the inconvenience to himself, so you know he's not going to last very long in a movie about the French revolution, and he doesn't.
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| "Sure, I seem like a drunken jerk now, but just you wait..." |
I don't think I'd ever seen Ronald Colman in a movie before, and he was just great as Sydney Carton, the world-weary, alcoholic lawyer who in the end does a "far, far better thing than [he] has ever done..." The role is tragic, of course, but Colman also managed to find the bits of humor in it, such as the scene when he is writing notes in the courtroom for Stryver to read outloud, sometimes with unintentionally hilarious consequences. He also portrays Sydney as more than just a cad; even when he's at his most obnoxious, he still manages to be sympathetic.
The movie is famous for its scene of the peasants storming the Bastille, and rightly so. It's very well done, considering the only special effects they had were the set and the people. Selznick may have been an obsessive compulsive control freak, but you have to admit he achieved quite the result.
I just bought the book yesterday, and I'm looking forward to seeing if it lives up to the movie, instead of the other way around.
1 comment:
There's a book....? ;o)
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