Paris, 1 January: Henri Diamant-Berger's The Three Musketeers has proved to be a boon for the Pathé Cinéma Consortium, despite its enormous budget. A few weeks ago, the company showed its appreciation by throwing a banquet to celebrate reaching the grand total of 1,000 copies rented to exhibitors. Paris, 10 January: Louis Delluc has written his final critique for Paris-Midi. He is going to devote himself to Cinéa and the filming of La Femme de nulle part (The Woman from Nowhere) in the Gaumont studios at la Villette. New York, 11 January: The latest film written and directed by Erich von Stroheim, who also plays the lead is Foolish Wives. It has just opened here at the Central Theater and is his most ambitious production by far. The film looks great with its convincing recreation of the Monte Carlo setting and use of atmospheric photography, while the plot represents a natural culmination of the theme of the naïve American wife deceived by an unscrupulous adventurer, as explored in Stroheim's previous film projects. Here, he gives his most sustained performance as the leading charater, a bogus count, a seducer and a swindler, who is aided in his nefarious schemes by two cynical young ladies who pose as his cousins. Unfortunately, the film was beset by problems from the beginning and went far over budget. Worst of all, Stroheim's completed version, running 18 reels or more, was considered too long and was severly cut by the studio to its present length of 14 reels. Nonetheless, Universal's publicists have been working overtime, erecting giant billboards in New York with such advertising slogans as "He's going to make you hate him even if it takes a million dollars of our money to do it!" Undoubtedly, this is by far the most expensive film that Laemmle's Universal studio has yet made. Paris, 13 January: First release of La Vie et l'œuvre de Molière for the 300th anniversary of Molière's birth. The production was made by Jacques de Férady on the orders of the Minister for Public Education. Moscow, 1 February: In order to emerge from the chaos of a Russia hungry and in ruins, newspapers and novels are seeking to mobilize the population, but the vast country is 80 percent illiterate. How then can one explain, convince and educate them? How does one forge men and women anew to create a new society? Thankfully, the cinema is accessible to all. Lenin told Lunatcharski, the people's commissar of education, an intellectual and highly-considered screenwriter, "Of all the arts, the cinema is for us the most important." Indeed, he can and must relay the propaganda as widely as possible. Now that the creators of bourgeois melodramas and their clientele have left for Europe, the cinema has ceased to be a way of passing the time, and has become more a tool of social and moral progress -- an art to be put to use for the benefit of the masses. The dilapidated state of the studios is an obstacle, but this ambitious task will be tackled. Los Angeles, 2 February: Inauguration of a new series of cartoons, "Laugh-O-Grams" by Walt Disney, with Four Musicians of Bremen, a parody of the fable. Hollywood, 2 February: With the last rites being read over Fatty Arbuckle's career, another scandal has erupted at the accident-prone Paramount studio. This time it looks like murder. The victim is top Paramount director William Desmond Taylor, whose lifeless body police have discovered at his luxurious Westlake bungalow. They arrived to find the place a hive of activity. Two Paramount executives were burning papers in the fireplace while the instantly recognizable figure of lovely comedienne Mabel Normand, a close friend of Taylor, was feverishly ransacking the dead man's bureau for compromising documents. The circumstances of Taylor's life and death are bizarre. Taylor had claimed to be an English gentleman, but he was in fact of Irish descent, born William Deane-Tanner in 1877, who abandoned his family in New York in 1908 and resurfaced in Hollywood. The police have found his closets crammed with pornographic material and also lingerie that bears the monogram "M.M.M," the initials of actress Mary Miles Minter. There are more questions than answers to the affair. Copenhagen, 7 February: World premier of Die Gezeichneten (Love One Another), filmed in Germany by Carl Theodore Dreyer and starring Polina Piekovska and Vladimir Gadjarov. Paris, 28 February: The court case of André Legrand versus Marcel L'Herbier has drawn to a close in favor of L'Herbier. The jury decided that his film Villa Destin was not based on Oscar Wilde's work The Crime of Lord Arthur Saville, to which Legrand has the exclusive rights. New York, 22 February: Americans have been fortunate to see the German film The Loves of Pharaoh, by the director Ernst Lubitsch, before it has been released in Germany. It is true, however, that the film was partly financed by an American company, the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and that Lubitsch's previous films have all been great successes in the US. A grandiose epic with vast sets and impressive crowd scenes -- it used 126,000 extras and took 10 months to shoot -- The Loves of Pharaoh is also a personal work of immense charm and sensitivity. Actor Emil Jannings, the larger-than-life Titan of the German cinema, has created a tyrannical yet pathetic Pharaoh Amenes, unhappy in love. By paying attention to every detail of the luxury and debauchery of the period, Lubitsch has succeeded in reaching the apotheosis of the historical film. In refining his style, the director of Anne Boleyn and Madame Dubarry has managed to circumvent, in a virtuoso manner, the traps inherent in this type of production. Here, he has confirmed his reputation for being able to bring a human dimension into a historical tale, sustaining the atmosphere throughout. And to lighten a rather somber story, Lubitsch has treated certain scenes as comedy, a genre in which he is a master. Participating in the achievement of the film were the cameramen Theodor Sparkuhl and Alfred Hansen, and the decorators, Ernst Stern and Kurt Richter. Apart from Jannings, there are also good performances by Dagny Servaes (who replaced Pola Negri) as a slave with whom the Pharaoh falls in love, and Harry Liedtke as the young man whom the slave prefers. Berlin, 5 March: Having left his sinister castle in the Carpathian mountains in a coffin filled with earth, the vampire Nosferatu is now throwing his menacing shadow across the movie screens of the world and frightening audiences. Freely adapted from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, the film entitled Nosferatu, the Vampire, was made by the great German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Although it was shot for the most part in actual locations instead of in the usual stylized studio sets and has used realistic interiors, the film is marked by the influence of German Expressionism. This is notable in the choice of strange camera angles and eerie images in the photography of Fritz Arno Wagner and Gunther Kampf, as well as in the expressive decor of Albin Grau. All this makes Nosferatu a "strange symphony of horror," which is the German subtitle of the work. It also used the special effects of negative film and speeded-up motion to suggest a ghostly ride. The disturbing and fascinating vampire is brilliantly interpreted by Max Schreck. His spectral gaunt figure -- shaven head, pointed ears sticking out, cavernous eyes and sharply-pointed fingernails -- is unforgettable. Besides its capacity to shock, the supernatural tale is a work of poetry and immense plastic beauty. Hollywood, 10 March: For some time, various voices raised against the film industry have called for some form of film censorship and industry regulation. This has escalated since the recent scandals concerning comedian Fatty Arbuckle and director William Desmond Taylor. In order to forestall such pressures, the leading studios have decided to institute a system of self-regulation, to be administered by a new organization, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), which will also serve as a liaison between the industry and the public. Will H. Hays, the former postmaster-general, will head the organization, and has stated its aims as follows: "To foster the common interest of those engaged in the industry by establishing and maintaining the highest possible moral and artistic standards in motion picture production, be developing the education as well as the entertainment value and general usefulness of the motion picture... and by reforming abuses relative to the industry..." It seems that from now on, the industry's morals will be under close scrutiny. Will H. Hays (center), first president of the MPPDA, with the founding fathers of the organization (l. to r.): E. W. Hammons, J. D. Williams, Winfield Sheehan, Cortland Smith, Carl Laemmle, Rufus Cole, William E. Atkinson, Will H. Hays, Robert H. Cochrane, Samuel Goldwyn, Marcus Loew, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Lewis Selznick, Myron Selznick. Marseilles, 31 March: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the Expressionist film directed by Robert Wiene which was banned by the prefecture only three days after its release due to complaints from exhibitors, can once more be shown provided that certain scenes are cut. Shanghai, 31 March: The filmmaker Zhang Shichuan has recently created the Mingxing Company. Production has already started on three comic films, two of them inspired by Charile Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Hollywood, 1 April: Douglas Fairbanks' new film, Robin Hood has turned out to be as exciting as United Artists promised it would be... and more. The movie bowls one over with its sheer exuberance and technical wizardry. Almost entirely financed by Fairbanks himself, it cost over $1.5 million to make. Inside a new studio located on Santa Monica Boulevard, art director William Buckland built the biggest sets ever conceived for a motion picture, including a gigantic castle with 90-foot-high walls, which needed 500 workmen to construct. It seems even more immense on the screen because the top of the castle was painted onto glass before being photographed by Art Edeson. Many of the action scenes surpass any Fairbanks has done before, with hidden trampolines being used to give more lift to his leaps, particularly one across a 15-foot moat. There is plenty of bounce in Allan Dwan's direction as well. Dwan agreed to work for 5 percent of the profits, which was a shrewd move when one considers the public acclaim the film has already received. Ironically, Fairbanks first refused to play the hero of Sherwood Forest, who robs the rich to give to the poor. "I don't want to play a flat-footed Englishman," he said when the project was first brought to him. Fortunately, his entourage were not afraid to argue, and they pointed out the romantic ingredients: the Merrie Men (including Willard Louis, Alan Hale, Bud Geary and Lloyd Talman), the wicked sheriff (William Lowery), the evil prince (Sam De Grasse), the good king (Wallace Beery) and, of course, Maid Marion (Enid Bennett). Doug, at 39, seems stronger and more agile than ever, his heels hardly ever touching the ground. Fairbanks couldn't be flat-footed if he tried. Robin Hood is the best Fairbanks picture yet, and one wonders what further heights he will be able to scale. Prague, 7 April: Release of Karl Anton's first film Cikani (The Bohemians), inspired by the romantic poet Karel H. Macha. Hollywood, 18 April: It has taken three trials, stretching over four months, to clear Roscoe Arbuckle of the charges brought against him after the death of Virginia Rappe last September. At the first trial in December, the judge reduced the main charge to that of involuntary homicide, but the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict. A new jury remained hung at the retrial in February. Third time around, on 12 April, it took the jury only five minutes to clear the Fat Man of all blame. They put it on record that, "We feel that a great injustice has been done to him... Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent." However, Arbuckle's acquittal has not rescued his career. He has sold his house and cars to pay his lawyers' fees. Paramount has withdrawn his movies from circulation and consigned two others recently completed to the vaults. It has reportedly cost them $1 million. Reviled by both press and public, Fatty can no longer find work in the world where he briefly reigned as one of the Kings of Comedy. New York, 20 April: Release of Max Fleischer's Bubbles, directed by brother Dave, a technically fascinating 7-minute short starring Koko the Clown. Los Angeles, 21 April: Rudolph Valentino's colorful private life is once more in the news. He has been arrested and imprisoned on a bigamy charge. Last May he married for the second time, tying the knot in Mexico with the exotic costume designer Natasha Rambova (born Winifred Shaunessy in Salt Lake City). Valentino had been divorced from his first wife, actress Jean Acker, since January. That marriage was not consummated and did not last beyond their wedding night in November 1919. Nevertheless, they did have to stay married for the three months necessary for their divorce to go through. Unfortunately, California law requires a year to elapse before a new marriage can be entered into. Valentino has spend several uncomfortable hours with the police, but has convinced them of his good faith and is once more a free man. He is now reunited with Rambova, an intimate friend of the actress Alla Nazimova, Valentino's co-star in Camille. After the emotional turmoil he has undergone in recent years, Valentino is confident that he will find true happiness with his new wife, who will in future be designing the star's costumes. Paris, 4 May: The Cocorico Cinéma has opened in the Bellville district. The artistic director is actor René Cresté, who is best known for his roles in films by Léonce Perret and as Louis Feuillade's Judex. Paris, 16 May: The news that Berthe Dagmar was seriously wounded by a panther during filming of Marie chez les fauves was only made public today, when the director Jean Durand presented the film to the public. Paris, 17 May: Baron Gabet, who chaired Pathé Cinéma's annual board meeting, has announced that the profits for the year 1921-1922 amounted to a net profit of 16,153,203 francs. Moscow, 21 May: Kino-Pravda, still edited by Dziga Vertov, has replaced Kino-Nedelia. Marseilles, 31 May: Inhabitants watched in astonishment as a naval battle between 18th-century ships took place just off the coast. It had been organized by Louis Feuillade for a scene in Fils de flibustier (The Buccaneer's Son). Paris, 6 June: It was decided at the French Entertainment Industry's annual meeting that all movie theaters in France will shut on 15 February 1923 if nothing is done to reduce the crippling charges imposed on the profession. New York, 11 June: Nanook of the North, the extraordinary documentary by the director and explorer Robert J. Flaherty, has been a triumph at the Capitol, the largest movie theater in the city. With the perception of a poet, the humility of a great humanist, and the passion of an ethnologist, Flaherty shows the daily life of an Eskimo family with whom he formed a friendship during a sojourn of 15 months in the north of Canada. Benefiting from the financial support of the Revillon brothers, wholesalers and retailers of fur, Flaherty has directed a film in which the Eskimos are shown from their own point of view, and not from the perceptions of an outsider. This rapport between the people and the man behind the camera gives this document a universal quality. New York, 18 June: Release of Emmett J. Flynn's A Fool There Was, adapted from Rudyard Kipling's poem and Porter Emerson Browne's play. Estelle Taylor, Lewis Stone, Irene Rich and Marjorie Daw star in this Fox release. Los Angeles, 22 June: Paul Terry releases several new installments in his "Aesop's Fables" series, which began in 1920: The Fable of Brewing Trouble, The Fable of the Mischievous Cat, The Fable of the Worm That Turned, The Fable of the Boastful Cat and The Fable of the Dog and the Fish. Later, on the 26th, he adds The Fable of the Farmer and the Mice. Paris, 8 July: The 24-year-old actor and journalist René Clair, whose given name is René Chomette, made his film debut last year in Le Lys de la vie. The talented young man has made several subsequent appearances, notably in two Feuillade serials, L'Orpheline and Parisette, but he would like to exchange acting for directing. In Brussels he has been offered a post as assistant director to the prolific French filmmaker Jacques de Baroncelli. René Clair is on his way. Paris, 31 July: Disappointed by his three years in California, Max Linder has now returned to France and made public his wish to live in Nice, as well as to work there. Thus ends the second American phase of "the man in the silk top hat." Linder's first sojourn in America, between 1916 and 1917, turned out to be disastrous because his employers at Essanay made the absurd mistake of trying to thrust him upon the American public as a "cleaner" rival of Charlie Chaplin, whom they dubbed a "dirty and sordid" comedian. Continuous ill-health had also hampered his work there. Having learned a lesson from this unhappy experience, Linder then returned to America in 1919, this time as actor, director and independent producer. But the films he directed and appeared in over there were considered by the American administration as foreign productions and, as a result, their distribution was seriously limited. However, this did not prevent him from shooting three movies in California, which have been recognized as considerable successes: Seven Years' Bad Luck, Be My Wife and, above all, The Three Must-Get-Theres (a parody of Douglas Fairbanks' recent The Three Musketeers). Despite the triumphant premiere of the latter at Ocean Park, the dapper French comic was not dissuaded from returning to Europe several days later. Rome, 5 September: Presentation of O'Ouragan sur la montagne (Storm on the Mountain), by Julien Duvivier, with Gaston Jacquet and Lotte Loring. This film marks the first Franco-German co-production since the Great War. Berlin, 7 September: Marlene Dietrich is playing the lead in the revival of the play Pandora's Box, by Franz Wedekind, a major exponent of Expressionism. Copenhagen, 18 September: Danish director Benjamin Christensen spent a considerable amount of time in Sweden making his latest film Häxan (Witchcraft Through the Ages), and it is his most impressive to date. Christensen conducts a documentary-style investigation into the practice of witchcraft, from medieval times to the present day, using etchings, carefully reconstructed tableaux reminiscent of paintings by Brueghel and Bosch, old manuscripts and re-enacted episodes in which the director plays the Devil. The film, which was three years in the making, regards the witch as a victim of a repressive and superstitious Church -- nothing more, in fact, than a harmless hysteric. An array of cinematic devices has created a film that is at once illuminating, frightening and amusing. It also presents cruelty and nudity, which are part of the diabolic and satanic practices depicted. These might find disfavor in more puritanical places outside Scandinavia. Christensen, a former opera singer, writer and actor, made his debut as a director in 1913 with Det Hemmelighedsfulde X (The Mysterious X), immediately revealing his preoccupation with the macabre. This was then followed by Hævnens nat (Night of Revenge), essentially another melodrama of escape, revenge and retribution, but which he invested with great plastic beauty. Both these films were greatly admired by Christensen's compatriot Carl Dreyer, another master of the horror genre, whose film Blade af Satans Bog (Leaves from Satan's Book) appeared here to acclaim a few years ago. Because of the extraordinary length of time it took Christensen to research the subject and shoot it Witchcraft Through the Ages is only the Danish director's third picture. Although made in Sweden, this remarkable film is a product of someone from Denmark, probably one of the most advances cinematic milieux in Europe. Germany, 22 September: The government is suffering a loss of 2 million marks a day because of the movie theater industry's general strike against taxes. New York, 28 September: Premiere of Cecil B. De Mille's Manslaughter. De Mille challenges the limits of screen sexuality in this melodrama. As is typical of De Mille's films, he displays sensational scenes of debauchery and then punishes the perpetrators in order to have them pay for their sins. In this moralizing film that stars Leatrice Joy and Thomas Meighan, society-girl thrillseeker Lydia (Joy) causes the death of motorcylce policeman and is prosecuted by her fiancé Daniel (Meighan), who describes in lurid detail the downfall of Rome. While she's in prison she reforms and Daniel becomes a wasted alocholic. De Mille provides a flashback fantasy sequence depicting the decadence and debauchery of Ancient Rome, complete with an orgy scene and a lesbian kiss. Hollywood, 5 November: The Headless Horseman, by Edward Venturini, is the first film in the US that has been shot entirely on panchromatic film. Paris, 15 November: At the annual Cinema Festival that is organized by the Cinema Lovers' Club, Léon Moussinac gave a warmly applauded speech followed by excerpts from the most outstanding films of the year. Paris, 2 December: In an editorial entitled "Theatre and Truth" for Ciné-Journal, written following the immense success of the film Nanook of the North, Georges Dureau remarked on "the over-all weakness of theatrical style films, and the obvious need felt by the public to see real life on the screen." Paris, 11 December: The Chamber of Deputies is the scene of heated debates after the decision made by the president of the Censorship Board to ban Ernst Lubitsch's Madame Dubarry. New York, 22 December: According to the editorial in today's New York Times, "Arbuckle has become a symbol of the vices indulged in by the world of cinema." Sofia, 22 December: The first full-length Bulgarian film Pod staroto nebe, by Nikolai Larine, was shown at the Theatre Moderne. Paris, 23 December: The police have had to intervene at the Artistic Cinema in order to separate spectators when a fight broke out during the screening of Madame Dubarry, a German film directed by Ernst Lubitsch. For several months, a campaign has been orchestrated by an extreme right-wing newspaper, which has been denouncing, with violence and hatred, "foreign films" whose scenarios treat the history of France. A royalist group and members of the Action Française have not hesitated to stop the projection of Lubitsch's film, as well as Orphans of the Storm by D. W. Griffith, whose action takes place in Paris during the Revolution. (Griffith has "defamed the history of France in an odious manner.") The great American director has responded to these pathetic accusations with explicit historical references from the works of Guizot and Taine: "It is a very sad thing to see a group of French people condemn my little story." The followers of Léon Daudet have reproached Lubitsch and Griffith for having dared to represent the aristocrats as depraved, Louis XVI as fat and sleepy, etc. These xenophobes have invaded theaters and attacked members of the audience, thereby placing liberty of expression in jeopardy. It must be said that these films have been very successful in America. Paris, 27 December: Jean Epstein's film Pasteur was shown at the Sorbonne to commemorate the scientist's 100th birthday. Germany, 31 December: Sixty-four percent of films shown during the past year were home-grown productions. Germany, 31 December: The number of production companies has now reached the 300 mark. Paris, 31 December: There are now 207 movie theaters in the French capital and 2,959 in the entire country, including Morocco and Algeria.