Free tissues as festival brings Cary Grant's 'Weepie' to Bristol

Free packs of paper hankies will be offered to everyone attending this month’s Bristol Megascreen showing of the tear-jerking 1941 film PENNY SERENADE which earned its Bristol-born co-star Cary Grant his first Oscar nomination.

The screening - on Saturday 29 November (6pm for 6.30pm) - is the latest event to be put on by the Cary Comes Home festival, set up in 2014 to celebrate the Hollywood actor and global style icon’s links to the city where he was born, grew up and often revisited.

Festival director Charlotte Crofts says: “We’ve been dreaming of showing Penny Serenade on the big screen for years—and now it’s finally happening! This is a film that deserves to be experienced in all its emotional glory, and there’s nothing like sharing those tears and laughter with a live audience.”

In the film, Irene Dunne triggers flashbacks from the ups and downs of her life and marriage as she re-listens to memories-soaked 78rpm records while on the brink of divorcing  her husband, Roger (Cary Grant).

Charlotte Crofts adds: “It would spoil it to give too much of the plot away but both Irene and Cary have named this as their finest work and it’s certainly a film which pulls at the heart. The New York Times’s critic warned: ‘If you are prone to weeping, you might want to take along a washtub’ while another reviewer asked ‘What more would you want from a movie, but that it makes you feel? I’m not a crier by nature, but if I cry I want it to be worth it and this one’s worth it’.” 

To cope with any tears, guests at the screening will be offered free packs of Cary Grant- branded tissues. Other pre-film extras will include a DJ playing 78rpm records on a traditional gramophone and a choir singing some of the songs heard in the film. There will also be a post-screening panel discussion/ Q&A about music and melodrama.

Bookings are open now using a sliding scale of ticket prices  via www.carycomeshome.co.uk or Headfirst https://hdfst.uk/e139428

This event is happening as part of TOO MUCH: Melodrama on Film, a major UK-wide season celebrating cinema’s biggest emotions and heightened dramatics from around the world. Presented with the support of the BFI Film Audience Network, awarding funds from the National Lottery.