Dark v light is a hell of a balancing act. I must hold my hand up and say I've got bugger all experience with film, but aye, everything I read says that it handles contrast far better than digital. As far as digital goes, I gather dynamic range has tended to improve over time - and all the rumours are true, shooting in RAW does help a lot.
I'm happy to be corrected by others, but faced with a scene like this using digital (whatever the camera) I'd tend to set the exposure (by trial and error using the histogram) to suit the brighter areas, and try to lighten the shadows a bit when it's on the computer, rather than the other way around. Or take several versions of the same shot with different exposures in hope that one of them hits the mark. (One major advantage of digital of course - a shot costs pretty much nothing.)