"This early version of A Tale of Two Cities is quite a remarkable film in many ways, and was thought very highly of at the time by critics who considered it one of the screen's finest achievements to date. Produced in late 1916, it shows quite clearly that Lloyd was influenced to a great degree by D. W. Griffith's Intolerance, although of course every director worth his salt was inevitably influenced by that film.... The intercuts and cut-backs are very Griffithian, although they are equally Dickensian, and Griffith openly acknowledged his debt to Dickens' writing style. But Lloyd (also) seems to be deliberately trying to slash away many of the Griffith trappings: he gets his story underway with remarkable rapidity and far less time devoted to establishment of period milieu and character than Griffith would have taken. His script is simple and direct, and avoids some of the ponderous pitfalls of the (well known 1935) MGM version.... The dual-role trick photography is extremely sophisticated, and a great deal less obvious than in many much later productions." William K. Everson