ENTERTAINMENTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3295, 14 August 1911, Page 7

ENTERTAINMENTS.

BATHE PICTURES. A large audience assembled at His Majesty’s Theatre on Saturday night to witness the new programme, including the film “A Tale of Two Cities.” ‘The picture took over an hour to run through, and during the whole of that time the audience followed with earnest attention the many changing scenes adapted from Dicken’s great work. The opening scene at the gate of the Marquis St. Evremond’s chateau, is at (nee realistic and incisive, and the attitude of the so-called nobility of uhe pei : od to the hungering masses is brought out in bold relief. The Marquis enters, accompanied by several friends, and tlie gates clang shut in the faces of the beggars there assembled. In the Chateau the Marquis discovers that he is the only gentleman of the party who is without a lady, and the jibes of his friends on this account apparently cause his displeasure. Annoyed by their taunts, he wagers that he will produce a lady, and at once leaves his home and drives through a lonely wood. . Here he happens upon a peasant girl who is gathering wood with her lover. The latter is felled with a blow .from the staff of one of the coachmen, and the Marquis abducts the girl and hastens back to the chateau, where the prayerful appeals of the girl are treated with derision and contempt by the guests. A moment later the infuriated lover bursts through the. door, the girl runs to him, and the Marquis draws his sword. The peasant parries the first thrust with -his stick, but falls dead to tlie second, and his sweetheart is torn from his prone body and carried away. The imprisonment in the fearful Bastille of tlie upright and kindly Dr. Manette, the death of his wife, and the action of Defarge, hi 6 servant, who carries liis infant daughter to safety in England are the next incidents to be depicted. Amid the homely surroundings of lellson’s Bank, the Doctor’s daughter grows to womanhood, and it is in her love affair that the tumult of feeling attains its most powerful sway. The Doctor is discovered in the Bastille by the faithful Defarge, who long thought him dead, and his release is granted. Time has dealt hardly with the prisoner, and it is only with difficulty that he remembers incidents connected with his earlier life. His daughter comes to France, and they travel together back to England, where the girl is later married to Charles Darvey, a nephew of the autocratic Marquis. The picture then goes on to depict incidents connected with Darney’s recall to Prance, and his condemnation to death at the guillotine. Sydney Carton, who also loves the doctor’s daughter, then obtains admittance to the prison, and takes his friend’s place in the condemned cell while the latter is hurried away to a carriage. The Marquis has long been dead, he having been killed in the early hours of the Revolution, and the Doctor and his now happy family have no fear for the future. Sydney Carton awaits his execution with fortitude, and at length he goes to the machine of death comforting a fellow prisoner who is conveyed to the place of execution in the same vehicle.