Lol! I have a degree in acting and directing. What are you credentials?
Link to your IMDB page please.
Yurka plays an attitude, not an objective. She plays "menace", vs. a character you believe as a human being off the screen.
Duly note that the source I used to put together the response below was directly culled and coalesced together from Charles Dickens' novel A Tale Of Two Cities.
Yurka delivers an attitude motivated by an objective which is made clear from the beginning to the end of the film, exploding during each and every courtroom sequence and the breaking of the wine cask frenzy and the death-by-carriage of the child episode and the storming of the Bastille quadrille, an objective that cosmically erupts during the reading of the letter.
Madame Defarge represents the Entirety of the impoverished, hungry, silent, subjugated, suffering, scarecrowed French masses unceasingly working.
She is the mutilated earthenware People, she is the wine cask that broke and shattered like a walnut-shell in the streets, causing the cadaverous masses to stream into every nook and cranny, hungrily scooping wineblood-soaked dirt and wineblood-rotted fragments of the cask into their mouths, sucking the wineblood dry. She ignites the terrifying dances of death, She is the past and the present and the future of Humankind if Humankind continues to treat itself in a dehumanizing manner.
She is the People, She represents all those who were ground down to the ground, She represents the young people ground old, She represents the child with the ancient face and grave voice, she represents the Hunger and She is the filthy streets and the bad bread and the watered-down wine.
She is the People with foreheads knitted into the likeness of gallows-ropes, She is the People worked unceasingly with watchful eyes and great composure of manner.
She is the silent and dreadful voice, the silent and famished creature, and similar to Dr. Manette, the silent captive of many years who sat silently, looking fixedly, knitting, knitting, knitting, waiting, waiting, waiting.
She is the sum total of the people, the prisoners, the wicked, the wretched, the haunted, the dead.
She is the echo of footsteps coming and going and coming and going and coming and going without end.
She is the miserable dead child and the raped women and the milkless dry breasts.
She is the sunset striking brilliantly into the travelling carriage, scorching and steeping the aristocracy into crimson.
She The People is the Woodman and the Farmer who work unceasingly and silently until the time comes to spill the blood..
She is the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains, she is the boiling oil, the melted lead, the hot resin, the wax, the sulphour, she is the roaring and raging conflagration, she is the red-hot wind blowing everything edifice away, straight from the bowels of the earth.
She The People is the Hanged, the Jacques One and the Jacques Two and the Jacques Three, She is the Gorgon, She is the List, She is the Jury, She is Vengeance, She is La Guillotine.
She is the Bastille, She is Saint Antoine, She is the Procession and She is the Grindstone and She is the Carmagnole and she is the chained Devil (Dickens' terminology) straight from the bowels of the earth.
She says Nothing and does Everything without moving an inch.
That is the "attitude" Charles Dickens grafted, that is the Everyman Character he Farged from the guttural depths of Gaul's chthonian bloodsoaked soilsoul.
Madame DeFarge (neé Lady Macbeth? No not her, She sees no blood on her palms...) thinks and moves as silently as light from behind a cloud while coinstantaneously enraging the People to rage across France in four directions, obliterating all in sight without a thought.
She is an impenetrable sphinx who hypnotizes an entire civilization to bow down and execute her silent commands.
That letter reading was the most pivotal moment in the novel and film because it required Madame Defarge to not only once-and-for-all destroy Hope and Humanity and Regeneration and Resurrection, it required her to gain unbridled unconditional consent from the entire nation of France to do so. It required her to unify an entire nation behind one goal and one goal only: Merciless Ex Talionis [eye for an eye]: destroy the son and whoever else is in the path for the sins of the father.
Her moment demanded her to be operatic, melodramatic, and stentorian, and that style still works brilliantly today not only on stage, but also in film (and politics!) when utilized at the right moment or throughout an entire film: Sir Kenneth Branagh's Feast of St.Crispin's Day speech in Henry V, Jack Nicholson's "you can't handle the truth" response in A Few Good Men, Marlon Brando's "lend me your ears speech" in Julius Caesar, [little] Jodie Foster's rant against her lawyer in The Accused, Oprah Winfrey's magnificent declamatory delivery in The Color Purple, Christian Bale from beginning to end in Harsh Times, Harvey Keitel from beginning to end in Taking Sides, Ian McKellen in a staged performance of Macbeth (1979), James Dean's "Last Supper" banquet speech in Giant, Klaus Kinski from beginning to end in Aguirre, Der Zorn G-ttes, Leonardo Di Caprio from beginning to end in Revolutionary Road, Kate Winslet from beginning to end in Revolutionary Road, Marlon Brando begging for Jeanne during the finale of Ultimo Tango A Parigi, Ivan Dobronravov throughout Vozvrashcheniye, Anne Heche's courtroom appearance in Gracie's Choice, Al Pacino from beginning to end in 88 Minutes (in fact Pacino is famous for his operatic, melodramatic, stentorian performances, that style is his trademark), Jessica Lange as Cousin Bette, Michael Pitt as Paul in Funny Games U.S., Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood and In The Name Of The Father, as you can see a mixture of films from the 1950's to the present that were made after Blanche Yurka's "hammy" and "dated" performance.
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