France, 24 January: Jean Renoir has married Andrée Heuschling, known as Dédée. She was formerly the model for the filmmaker's famous artist-father, Auguste Renoir. London, 25 January: Doctor Elias, who is renowned for his research in optics, has developed Colorama, a new process for the cinema using natural colors. New York, January: Loew's Incorporated have taken over the five-year-old company, Metro Pictures. Marcus Loew is to continue as president. Paris, 1 February: After the referendum by the daily Comædia for the five best films -- Cecil B. De Mille's The Cheat and Charlie Chaplin's Shoulder Arms topped the list -- Filma magazine has given up the idea of an opinion poll for the five worst films: there are too many of them. Washington, 5 February: The undersecretary of state for the interior, F. K. Lane, has suggested to the heads of film companies that they help their country by making anti-Bolshevik propaganda films. Copenhagen, 9 February: Carl Dreyer has released his film President (Praesidenten), which stars Halvard Hoff and Elith Pio. Paris, 10 February: Cinema professionals gathered at the Palais d'Orsay in order to celebrate Louis Lumière's election to the Académie des Sciences on 15 December. But Auguste Lumière declined the invitation, acknowledging his brother as the inventor of the Cinematograph. Los Angeles, 16 February: At the airport, while they waited to catch an airplane together, Charlie Chaplin and Max Linder were interviewed by the American correspondent of the French weekly magazine Comædia about the recent poll on the world's five best films. Asked about their personal favorites, the two famous comedians paid each other diplomatic homage. Chaplin opined that the five most notable films were, naturally, made by Max Linder. His traveling companion averred that, on the contrary, the best ones could only be films featuring Charles Chaplin. At the end of this whimsical exchange, Chaplin and Linder talked about the close friendship they have enjoyed since 1917, which began when the French actor-director put in a brief stint at Essanay where Charlie was at work. Linder's wartime sojourn in America came to an abrupt end in mid-1917. He had completed only three films when, sadly, he contracted double pneumonia and was forced to spend nearly a year convalescing in a sanitarium in Switzerland. His health has never fully recovered from gas poisoning sustained during war service. Now Max Linder has crossed the Atlantic again in a fresh attempt to reconquer the American market -- no easy task and one in which he might benefit from Charlie Chaplin's counsel. Los Angeles, 22 February: Release of The River's End, starring Lewis Stone and Marjorie Daw. Victor Heerman and Marshall Neilan directed this adaptation of James Oliver Curwood's novel of mistaken identity in the Canadian gold fields for First National. Berlin, 27 February: An extraordinary film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, has opened in Germany. Following the recent successes of Ernst Lubitsch and Pola Negri and of new director Fritz Lang, it appears that the German movie industry is making a remarkable and rapid postwar recovery. Caligari, produced by Erich Pommer, written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Meyer, and directed by Robert Wiene, is an astonishing attempt to translate the imagery of German Expressionist painting and design to the movie screen. Most impressive of all are the stylized and painted canvas sets. Designers Herman Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig collaborated closely on the production, in which they made remarkable use of deliberately distorted perspectives -- narrow slanting streets that slice across each other at unexpected angles -- that are matched by the mesmerizingly strange performances of Werner Krauss as Caligari and Conrad Veidt as the somnambulist. Rome, 9 March: Giuseppe Barattolo and his UCI group have signed an agreement with German counterpart UFA with the goal of eventually controlling the European market. Hollywood, 16 March: The release of Maurice Tourneur's screen adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island. This has been made into a 55-minute film starring Lon Chaney, Shirley Mason and Charles Ogle. California, 31 March: The celebrated Belgian-born writer Maurice Maeterlinck, author of Pelléas and Mélisande, has been invited to Hollywood under contract to producer Samuel Goldwyn. New York, 2 April: John Barrymore, sweet prince of Broadway's leading family, has been dabbling in films since 1913 when he made his screen debut in Famous Players' An American Citizen. He has saved his serious energies for the stage, but now, with his twelfth film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he has come into his own. the 38-year-old Barrymore makes a handsome Dr. Jekyll, but when he downs the doctor's fatal potion he turns into a monstrous vision of pure evil before our very eyes. The chilling effect is completed with some skillful screen trickery. The sight of Jekyll's fingers dissolving into claws is followed by a close-up of Barrymore's Hyde in terrifying makeup. This Hyde is a hideous spider-like creature who scuttles on crooked legs. Soon the transformation begins to take place unaided by the evil elixir. While Dr. Jekyll sleeps, an enormous phantom spider crawls across the floor of his bedroom, settles on top of him and melts into his body. Jekyll wakes from feverish sleep as Hyde. In a strong supporting cast, sultry Nita Naldi is outstanding as the sexual temptation placed in Jekyll's way by Brandon Hurst's cynical Sir George Carewe. At Hyde's hands she becomes, quite literally, a shadow of her former self. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will cement Barrymore's popularity with moviegoers, although his theatrical posturing throughout the film has attracted some adverse comment. The reviewer in Variety observed that, for all the makeup, Hyde "was always Jack Barrymore," adding somewhat carpingly that "in one instance of alteration of personality, the director and/or star found it necessary to change the star's clothes as well as his individuality with the aid of drugs." Paris, 5 April: In his editorial in the daily Paris-Midi, Maurice de Waleffe is severly critical of the American invasion of French screens. He suggests these films be banned. Hollywood, 14 April: There has been another Hollywood scandal. The Attorney General of California has decided to prosecute Mary Pickford, whom he accuses of perjury and bigamy. This odd circumstance has gollowed the actress's recent marriage to Douglas Fairbanks on 28 March. For some years, the extramarital liaison between the two stars, both among the highest paid of the American cinema, has filled the gossip columns of newspapers. Pickford had been married to the charming actor Owen Moore, whom she met on the set at Biograph in 1913. Their divorce, announced in Minden, NV last March, upset the innumerable admirers of "America's Sweetheart." At the time, she declared that she did not envisage any remarriage in the immediate future. Nevertheless, less than a month later, the two co-founders of United Artists were married secretly in a small Hollywood church. Fairbanks himself just divorced Ann Beth Sully. To those who were astonished to see the star's recent statement contradicted, she replied,"Yes, I've changed my mind! Isn't that a woman's prerogative?" These light-hearted comments were badly timed, as the law is taking an even greater interest in the escapades of Hollywood. Ignoring the controversy, the young couple are getting ready to pay an extended visit to Europe. Brussels, 20 April: In La Libre Belgique, the journalist Vendabole qualifies movie lovers as "clods" and concludes that "the cinema is harmful because it renders people mindless." Pennsylvania, 30 April: The first trains containing cinema carriages have been put into service by the Pittsburgh Harmony Butler Rail Company. Cairo, 7 May: The Egyptian financier Talat Harb Pacha has created the Misr Bank and has announced plans to develop the movie industry here. New York, 31 May: Louis B. Mayer has set up Louis B. Mayer Productions Incorporated with a capital of $5 million. Hollywood, 15 June: Max Linder has sold his car and mortgaged various personal effects to finance his new film, Seven Years' Bad Luck. Filming has started at Universal City. Shanghai, 30 June: The opera singer Mei Lanfang is playing a servant in The Fragrance of Spring Makes It Difficult to Study, produced by the Commercial Press company from an adaptation of the play The Pavillion of Peonies. Hollywood, 10 July: Comedian Harold Lloyd, who suffered a serious accident one year ago, has been making a remarkable recovery, and his latest two-reeler, High and Dizzy, co-starring Mildred Davis and directed by Hal Roach, has just opened. While Lloyd posed for a gag photo at the Witzel studio in downtown L.A. last August, a prop bomb exploded and almost killed him. Forced to spend a long period in the hospital and convalescing thereafter, the actor has made a complete recovery but has lost the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Since Lloyd had finished four two-reelers prior to his accident, Pathé was able to spread their release to meet the growing demand for his comedies during his absence. By last autumn Harold was already back at work at the newly constructed Roach studio in Culver City, completing Haunted Spooks, the comedy he was filming at the time of his injury. In fact he had only graduated to two-reelers early in 1919, the first of which, the appropriately named Bumping into Broadway, had a special New York opening in November. At that time Lloyd made a rare trip back East to meet Charles Pathé and to celebrate the signing of a new contract with producer Roach -- and beheld his name in lights for the first time on the marquees of two of Gotham's largest movie theaters, the Strand and the Rialto. He can now only move forward on the road to success. (Use this link to view a QuickTime Clip from High and Dizzy.) New York, 13 July: D. W. Griffith has floated 500,000 shares in the new D. W. Griffith Corporation in order to finance his new studios at Mamaroneck, near New York City. Hollywood, 13 July: Lillian Gish, that wonderful star of so many D. W. Griffith films, has taken to directing. Although there is little evidence in Remodeling Her Husband that she will become a rival to her master and mentor, she has managed to demonstrate her imagination and competence. Admittedly, most of the laughter is provoked by the brilliant comic performance given by her sister Dorothy Gish in the main role as the vivacious heroine who, in a series of amusing episodes, teaches her smug husband (James Rennie) to appreciate her. She dominates the picture with her gift for pantomime. Paris, 16 July: Louis Dulluc is furious. Using his Paris-Midi column, he has clearly lambasted those who, in their profession as journalists, have been challenging the right of the director Maurice Tourneur to return to the US. On 21 April, Jean-Louis Croze, in his contribution to Comædia, reproached Tourneur for having spent the war years in America, and for having thus "saved his life, while so many of his compatriots lost theirs." Delluc believes that there is an arbitrary smear campaign motivated by "a treacherous chorus of bitter, sick, jealous and rancorous failures."      In 1914, because he spoke English well, Maurice Tourneur (real name Maurice Thomas) was sent to the United States to direct the American productions of Éclair at its Fort Lee, NJ, studios. He had been an assistant director with the company since 1911. The following year, he graduated to director and quickly gained a reputation for the pictorial quality of his work. During the last six years, he has become one of Hollywood's most respected directors, ranking only behind Griffith and Thomas Ince in popularity. The films of Tourneur (formerly a book illustrator and poster designer) are remarkable for their sets and composition. This is well-suited to fantasies such as The Wishing Ring (1914), Trilby (1915) and The Blue Bird (1920), outstanding examples of his ability to create a fairy-tale world. His latest picture is an adaptation of Stevenson's Treasure Island. As a young man, Tourneur served with the French artillery in North Africa, afterwards working as an assistant at the atelier of the sculptor Rodin. Instead of criticizing Tourneur's decision to work in the United States, the French should feel proud to have a compatriot of such stature. Paris, 18 July: The market porters from Les Halles have invited Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to come visit the "stomach of Paris." London, 31 July: According to a competition planned by The Picture Show magazine, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are Britain's favorite stars. Hollywood, 20 August: Erich von Stroheim has done it again! If there were ever any doubts regarding the quality of his talent as a director, they can now be set to rest. His latest film, The Devil's Pass Key, has just opened here to rave reviews and enthusiastic applause following the New York premiere earlier this month. According to the correspondent of Billboard magazine, who was present at that event, "Despite sweltering heat an SRO audience was held rapt with the enthralling interest, realism and charm so admirably pictures." Based on a story by the Baroness de Meyer entitled Clothes and Treachery, he new film is set in Paris immediately after the Great War and continues Stroheim's Universal studio formula of sophisticated sex, seduction and intrigue within a Continental setting. Stroheim himself does not appear as an actor in this one; however, as in Blind Husbands, the heroine is a dissatisfied wife (played by Una Trevelyn) who gets herself into trouble, and her well-meaning playwright husband is played by Sam de Grasse, the husband from the previous film. Clyde Fillmore, Maude George and Mae Busch provide the temptations. Although the picture was completed and even previewed earlier this year, the Universal publicity department has been so eager to get the greatest possible mileage out of Stroheim's name that the release was delayed until now. The director has, in fact, signed a new and lucrative contract with the studio. Berlin, 1 September: Ernst Lubitsch's Sumurun, adapted from an oriental pantomime by the producer Max Reinhardt, with Pola Negri, Jenny Hasselquist and Paul Wegener, with Lubitsch himself in the role of the little hunchback, is currently showing. Paris, 10 September: The young American star, Olive Thomas, has been found dead from bichloride poisoning in her hotel room at the Ritz. She was on vacation in Paris with her husband Jack Pickford, Mary's brother. It is still not known whether it was suicide or an accident. London, 10 September: During his visit to London, the American producer Jesse L. Lasky signed up a number of well-known writers such as Sir James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, and H. G. Wells to work with future film projects for Paramount. He is even attempting to persuade George Bernard Shaw to come into the fold. Paris, 10 September: The philosopher Henri Bergson has been quoted in Le Cinéme: "The cinematograph interests me, as do all inventions. It is capable of suggesting new thoughts to the philosopher. It could help in the synthesis of memory or thought." New York, 20 September: D. W. Griffith's melodrama Way Down East stars Lillian Gish in a vivid portrayal as Anna Moore - a young, fragile and innocent country girl in the big city, an ecstatically-infatuated new bride, a betrayed "wife," a bereaved unwed mother, and a matured woman. In the film's plot, Anna is seduced by callous city playboy Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman) into a sham marriage and then despoiled - the camera fades to black as they go to the bedroom. The duplicitious scoundrel abandons her and walks out on her when she became pregnant, and the ruined girl bears an illegitimate baby named Trust Lennox that dies shortly after birth. Anna wanders until she gets a job with Squire David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess). Bartlett falls for her, but she rejects him due to her past and then Lennox shows up lusting for Kate, Bartlett's mother. Seeing Anna, he tries to get her to leave, but she doesn't, and she tells no one about his past. When Squire Bartlett learns of her past from Martha, the town gossip, he tosses Anna out in a snow storm in the film's most famous scene. But before she goes, Anna fingers the respected Lennox, as the father of her dead baby and the spoiler of herself.    A few days after the release of the highly praised film, Griffith temporarily broke Gish's contract. Gish, considered to be too independent, rejoined the Frohman Amusement Company on a three-year contract. It is thought that because of Griffith's financial difficulties, he can no longer afford her salary. The director's decision, whatever the reasons, could have dire results. Lillian Gish is shocked, because she has always regarded their association as sacrosanct. Together, Gish and Griffith have made dozens of successful films. The triumph of Way Down East, for example, owed much to the charismatic actress, overpowering in her role as an unmarried young mother, pushed to despair. To try to fill the gap left by her absence, Griffith has now returned to Carol Dempster, whom he first directed in The Girl Who Stayed at Home (1919) and in two films since. (Use this link to view some clips from Way Down East on the University of New Orleans web site.) Hollywood, 25 October: Film director Rex Ingram has started shooting the super-production entitled The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, at Metro studios. His wife Alice Terry is playing the lead with Wallace Beery and a young unknown tango dancer, Rudolph Valentino. Berlin, 29 October: Paul Wegener has brought out his second adaptation of Meyrenk's novel of the fantastic, The Golem. France, 30 October: Abel Gance has continued filming on La Rose du rail at Arcachon. The film continues to be made under a cloud -- Gance's companion Ida Danis is dying. Los Angeles, 9 November: Mildred Harris can draw grim satisfaction from the fact that the divorce proceedings that she opened against Charlie Chaplin last August have come to a conclusion. She has been awarded $100,000 and a shar of the community property acquired since their marriage in October 1918. The ruling is the outcome of protracted wrangling between Chaplin and his wife's lawyers. From the outset, her lawyers threatened to attach the negative of Chaplin's latest film, The Kid, as part of the settlement. Chaplin made his own arrangements. At the beginning of August he left California under conditions of the greatest secrecy, taking with him over 200,000 feet of the completed footage. Holed up with two assistants in a hotel in Salt Lake City, Chaplin set to work editing the film. Mildred's lawyers eventually relented, waiving all claim to The Kid and leaving Chaplin in sole possession of the rights to the film. The Kid, in which Charlie co-stars with Jackie Coogan (who was 4 years old at the time of filming), has cost Chaplin $300,000 and taken 18 months to film. The emotional cost of the divorce has been as high, to which must be added a public brawl between Chaplin and producer Louis B. Mayer, who has been promoting Chaplin's career. Paris, 30 November: Fatty Arbuckle, the American comedian, was given a warm welcome by his fans at Saint-Lazare station. But they decided against carrying him in triumph: he weighs 300 pounds. Los Angeles, 5 December: Crowds are already forming to see The Mark of Zorro, the latest film starring Douglas Fairbanks. The energetic actor has taken a risk by breaking the embargo on costume pictures. It has been a common belief in the motion picture industry that period pieces play to empty theaters. In case this new venture failed, Fairbanks decided to make it quickly and cheaply. He need not have worried. The story tells of Don Diego Vega, an effete nobleman in 19th-century California, who disguises himself as the dashing masked Zorro, protector of the weak and innocent. Doug is at his bouncy best, and the director, Fred Niblo, has kept the pace lively. New York, 28 December: The cinema, one of America's leading industries, is in a crisis due to a lack of overseas markets. Production has been reduced by 50 percent, putting 5,000 out of work. China, 31 December: To date, China has produced 35 full-length films (33 in Shanghai and two in Hong Kong), numerous short films and documentaries.