RESIDENTS will have a rare opportunity to see old Lyme Regis on film with a special charity screening this month.

The Regent Cinema will screen the 1949 film All Over the Town, filmed in Lyme, on the morning of Tuesday May 31, for the first time in three years.

No usable print of the film remains, but the negative survived at the National Film and Television Archive, and in 2005 the Lyme Regis Film Society came to the rescue.

It paid for a new print to be made and also for permission for the film to be shown in Lyme Regis.

The new print is kept safely in Lyme Regis Museum, along with contemporary posters and other related material.

This print has been shown a couple of times at the Regent Cinema, Broad Street, the last occasion being around three years ago.

With the kind support of Scott Cinemas and cinema manager David Johnson, all proceeds from the latest screening will be shared equally between the Town Mill Trust and the Marine Parade Shelters Fund.

The costs of hiring the cinema are being covered by two sponsors, so every penny from admissions will go to the two causes.

Chris Boothroyd, a volunteer for the Marine Parade Shelters Fund, said: “With its outdoor scenes filmed in Lyme, this ‘gentle satire of provincial politics’ in a seaside town (‘Tormouth’) beautifully evokes post-war Lyme Regis.

“Scenes and sights which today are familiar appear like old friends in slightly unexpected and nostalgic dress – instead of Tesco, for example, not even Woolworths but a garage for the repair of all those black-only Fords.”

All Over the Town stars Norman Wooland as Nat Hearn, returning to his reporter’s job on the Tormouth Clarion after the war.

When circumstances conspire to give Nat a share in the business and the editor’s chair, he radically alters its editorial policy.

Tickets will be at normal cinema prices (balcony – £6.50/£5 concessions, £20 family; stalls – £5.50/£4/£16.50).

They can be booked in advance online at lymeregis.scottcinemas.co.uk, by phone 0871 230 3200, in person at the cinema, or from the cinema on the day.

Coffee and cake will be available from 10.15am, with an opportunity to look at the exhibition material loaned by the museum.

The film will start at 11am and finish at 12.30pm.