Los Angeles, 10 January: The producer Harry Cohn and his brother Jack, in association with Joe Brandt, have founded Columbia Pictures. The studios are situated at 6070 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood. Paris, 15 January: Release of a short puppet film La Petite chanteuse des rues, directed by Ladislas Starewitch, with his daughter Nina. Paris, 25 January: For Pierre Gilles of the Matin, "the cinema is an industrial commodity that the silent partner can manipulate with impunity." But the Film Authors' Society has replied that "the artistic qualities of a film remain the property of the director." Rome, 30 January: Due to the crisis in the Italian film industry, the producer Giuseppe Barattolo has withdrawn his financial participation in Abel Gance's Napoleon. If Gance want to continue with the project he will have to find a new backer. Canton, 1 February: Lin Minwei, who specializes in political documentaries, has finished filming Sun Yat-sen's first Kuomintang congress. Hollywood, 3 February: The eminent Swedish director, Victor Sjöström, signed to a contract by the Goldwyn Co., has completed his first American film. Name the Man stars Mae Busch and Conrad Nagel, and its director is now to be known here as Victor Seastrom. Hollywood, 4 February: The comic actor Harry Langdon has made his film debut in a Mack Sennett film, Picking Peaches. He intends to make 10 more films in the coming year. Paris, 8 February: Louis Delluc, who has been ill since filming l'Inondation (The Flood), has submitted his latest article to the daily Bonsoir. Hollywood, 1 March: Walt Disney has released Alice's Day at the Sea, the first in a series called "Alice in Cartoonland." The films are a mixture of cartoons and live action scenes. Stockholm, 10 March: The premiere of Mauritz Stiller's new film The Atonement of Gösta Berling has attracted a big audience. This sumptuous production of Selma Lagerlöff's novel has launched a new Swedish screen star, Stiller's 18-year-old protégée, Greta Garbo. The daughter of a laborer, Garbo had an unhappy childhood and appeared to be in a dead-end job as a salesgirl in a Stockholm department store when she was chosen to appear in a publicity film, How Not To Dress. After another publicity short, this time for a bakery, she was cast as the leading lady in a slapstick comedy, Peter the Tramp. Next, she applied for, and won, a scholarship to Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theatre training school and was soon playing small parts on stage. While still at the school she was spotted by Mauritz Stiller, an accomplished director of both epic drama and social comedy who, in 1920, scored a big international success with Erotikon, a handsomely mounted sex drama. He is now Garbo's mentor and inseparable companion. New York, 10 March: Premiere of King Vidor's Happiness, starring Laurette Taylor, Pat O'Malley and Hedda Hopper. J. Hartley Manners adapted his play about the adventures of a young shopgirl who learns that having money is not the key to happiness for this Metro release. New York, 18 March: The first showing of The Thief of Bagdad took place this evening at the Liberty Theater in New York City. At the end of the projection, Douglas Fairbanks, the star and producer of the film, a follow-up to his superb Robin Hood (1922), jumped onto the stage to tremendous applause. The director, Raoul Walsh, joined him an instant later to share in the honors. The Thief of Bagdad is the most ambitious and opulent film made by United Artists since being founded five years ago by Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, D. W. Griffith and Fairbanks. The film cost almost $2 million and took five weeks to shoot. The fabulous sets, including impressive towering minarets and Moorish buildings by William Cameron Menzies, were constructed on a six-and-a-half acre location at the Pickford-Fairbanks studio. And the sparkling costumes were designed by Mitchell Leisen. In order to create the Magic Carpet effect, an ordinary carpet was hung on piano wires from a 22-metre-high crane that swung it high over the sets, making it look as though it were actually moving between heaven and earth. The final sequence shows Fairbanks and his beautiful princess (Julanne Johnston) sailing over the rooftops on the Magic Carpet, while the stars in the sky spell out "Happiness Must Be Earned." Paris, 22 March: The announcement of the death of writer and director Louis Delluc will, sadly, come as no surprise to fellow filmmakers and members of the press. Delluc never recovered from the illness that overtook him last autumn when he was filming L'Inondation. His doctors have declared that the cause of death was tuberculosis, but the truth is that Delluc killed himself with overwork. Author, journalist, man of the theater and cinema, he produced in his short working life 15 novels, a host of poems, essays and reviews, six books on cinema plus hundreds of articles and, last but not least, eight completed films and many unrealized scenarios. Moscow, 1 April: Sergei Eisenstein and Pletniev have convinces the Prolekult to tackle the cinema with a cycle of films under the title Towards Dictatorship. Eisenstein will be directing the first episode called Strike. Paris, 15 April: The actor Camille Bardou has left for Marseilles to make Le Lion des Mogols (The Lion of the Mogols). Jean Epstein is directing for Albetros, with Ivan Mosjoukine and Nathalie Lissenko. New York, 26 April: The American film industry has been transformed by the latest, and most important, merger since the formation of the Famous Players-Lasky/Paramount company almost eight years ago. This new conglomerate called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) has joined three medium-sized Hollywood studios to form a new "super studio" that may be in a position to challenge, and compete on equal terms with, Paramount, the current industry leader. The new amalgamation has come into being through the partnership of two powerful men, Marcus Loew, head of Loew's Inc., and Louis B. Mayer. Loew will continue to head the parent company with its headquarters in New York City, while Mayer will be in charge of the filmmaking operation at the Culver City studios near Los Angeles, formerly owned by the Goldwyn Co., with Irving G. Thalberg as his production chief. The new company has already inherited a number of completed films, as well as such forthcoming projects as Ben-Hur and The Merry Widow, along with an impressive lineup of stars that includes, among others, Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Ramon Novarro, Buster Keaton, Mae Murray and Alice Terry. Paris, April: Under the terms of their five-year agreement, Gaumont have formed a partnership with the American film company Loew's-Metro and will distribute their works in France. The new entity will, among other things, be taking charge of the Gaumont movie theater circuit. Berlin, 26 April: Fritz Lang has offered us the very best of his extraordinary talent in presenting Kriemhild's Revenge, the sequel to the equally magnificent Siegfried, seen here last February. This Scandinavian legend, taken up by the 13th-century German bards, and again by Richard Wagner, has allowed Lang entrance into cinematic legend. In just seven years, the 34-year-old director and scenarist has worked on 20 films. With Between Two Worlds, Dr. Mabuse, The Spiders and now The Nibelungen, in two parts comprising 249 absorbing minutes, Fritz Lang has become a director with few rivals. His wife, Thea von Harbou, has adapted this story of terrible vengeance, which concludes with the massacre of the Huns in a massively staged battle. It is a superb example of the craftsmanship at the UFA studios.         Scenes from Fritz Lang's Siegfried and Kriemhild's Revenge New York, 10 May: Reports show there are now 578 movie theaters in the city with seating for 428,926 people. Los Angeles, 28 May: Louis B. Mayer has offered Erich von Stroheim a bonus of $10,000 if he completes shooting of The Merry Widow in less than six weeks. Shooting has not started yet. Paris, 5 June: The Cinema Club has organized a special showing, at the Colisée, of an unreleased film made by André Antoine in 1920. The film, L'Hirondelle et la mésange (The Sparrow and the Tit), is based on a scenario by Gustave Gillet and was filmed entirely in the open air. Los Angeles, 10 June: Worried by the length of time the filming of Ben-Hur is taking in Italy and by the mediocrity of the scenes that are already done, the directors of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer have decided to employ radical means: the dismissal of the entire film crew. Versailles, 7 July: Police interrupted the shooting of an Austrian-directed production in the park. Artists from the Paris Casino were being filmed in the nude in orgiastic scenes of the most liberal kind. The film's directors have been imprisoned. Paris, 3 August: The studios at Billancourt are a hive of activity. Painters, carpenters and plasterers are preparing the sets for Napoleon, the spectacular production that director Abel Gance is planning to shoot in a few months. Several important scenes will be filmed in these studios, which have been acquired for the purpose by the film's producers. Several different studios will be involved in this ambitious project, the cost of which is estimated a 7 million francs. The plan is to release the finished work as six separate films. Audiences will be able to follow Napoleon Bonaparte from his birth in Corsica to his exile in St. Helena, a story that encompases the history of France through the Revolution, the Directory, the Consulate, the Empire and the Restoration. Gance has established his name with the dramatic pacifist message of J'accuse (1919) and the melodrama La Roue (1023). Of the latter Jean Cocteau declared: "There is cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso." Paris, 19 August: Charles Desvaux of the town council has asked the prefect to ban the Danish film Hamlet by Sven Gade, with Asta Nielsen. According to him it is "a vulgar melodrama with a pathetic scenario." Apparently the director made the mistake of imagining a feminine Hamlet. Los Angeles, 1 September: The screen has a new star, and it's a dog. The canine in question is Rin-Tin-Tin, a German Shepherd found in the trenches during the war by a US Army lieutenant named Lee Duncan. The dog accompanied his new master back to America where Duncan trained him for a film career. Rinty made his debut in Warner Brothers' The Man from Hell's River and is currently starring in Find Your Man, written by 22-year-old Darryl F. Zanuck. Many feel that Rinty is a better actor than many of the studio's human stars. New York, 4 September: Premiere of Universal's new Baby Peggy feature, The Family Secret, directed by William A. Seiter and featuring grown-up stars Gladys Hulette and Frank Currier. Hollywood, 9 September: In response to Paramount's success with The Covered Wagon last year, Fox has come up with its own epic Western, The Iron Horse, depicting the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the late 1860s. George O'Brien plays the young hero who has a job on the railroad while seeking to avenge his father's murder, while Madge Bellamy provides the love interest. But the real star of the film is its young director, John Ford, whose accomplished work has brought the story dramatically to life. To set a suitably grand tone one of Ford's great heroes of history, Abraham Lincoln appears as a character in the first scene, expounding the theme of the nation 'pushing forward the inevitable path to the West.' Containing many of the same ingredients as The Covered Wagon -- a river crossing, a fight with Indians, a love story -- it nevertheless has a more exciting narrative. One critic has called it 'an American Odyssey.' Ford establishes the themes that promise to make him dominant in the Western genre: the sense of communal solidarity and humor, the visual response to landscape, the vivid staging of action, but above all, the ability to turn this simple Western tale into a poetic celebration of 19th-century American progress. In this movie lie the seeds of what Ford might become: the unsurpassed chronicler of pioneering America. New York, 18 September: Release of Oscar Micheaux's Son of Satan, starring Ida Anderson and Andrew Bishop. Los Angeles, 21 September: Premiere of Vitagraph's Captain Blood, directed by David Smith and starring J. Warren Kerrigan in the title role. The supporting cast includes Jean Paige, Charlotte Merriam, James Morrison, Allan Forrest and Bertram Grassby. New York, 1 October: Columbia releases The Beautiful Sinner, starring William Fairbanks and Eva Novak. Directed by W. S. Van Dyke, the film also features George Nichols, Kate Lester and Carmen Phillips. New York, 13 October: Buster Keaton has come a long way since his 1917 debut alongside Fatty Arbuckle. Two years after that he formed a partnership with Joseph M. Schenck, distributing his films through MGM. In 1920 he made his first feature, The Saphead, and in 1921 he married into the Hollywood aristocracy when Natalie Talmadge, Schenck's sister-in-law, became his wife. Keaton's comic personalisty is doggedly unsentimental. Not even the slightest hint of a smile creases his face. The preoccupied little heroes in his films encounter a series of perils but react to each reversal with an exquisite economy of expression. Keaton can express passion with the sublest droop of the eyelids or the slow tossing of his hat in the air. Since 1920 the complete artistic control over his films has resulted in a series of inventive and superbly photographed shorts and features. Last year he scored a hit with Our Hospitality. This year the rich vein has continued with the charming fantasy of Sherlock Jr. and now his latest film release, The Navigator. Keaton has always been fascinated by machinery, and in The Navigator he has fashioned a brillant range of comic situations from a huge single prop, an abandoned schooner. This time Keaton plays Rollo, an idle young millionaire whose dream girl, Kathryn McGuire, turns down his marriage proposal. Disappointed, he embarks on an ocean cruise, only to wake up one morning to find the ship adrift at sea with himself seemingly the only passenger aboard, except, of course, for McGuire. The director of The Navigator is Donald Crisp, but the genius in control is Buster Keaton. Moscow, 25 October: The extravagant sets designed for Yakov Protazanov's Aelita, based on Tolstoy, have caused a sensation. Berlin, 26 October: The Danish filmmaker Carl Dreyer has unveiled his latest film, Michael. It was filmed in Germany with Benjamin Christensen, Nora Gregor and Walter Slezak in the cast. Paris, 31 October: Screening of Léon Abrams' film La Voyante (The Clairvoyant), starring Sarah Bernhardt, Harry Baur, Mary Marquet and Georges Melchior -- the last one made by the great star. Hollywood, 9 November: The first film entirely prepared and produced by the new motion picture studio MGM has just opened in Hollywood. He Who Gets Slapped, based on a 1914 Russian play by Leonid Andreyev, may seem to be a risky choice for the studio's debut feature, but the exceptional talents involved have carried off a cinematic coup. Studio chief Louis B. Mayer and supervisor of production Irving G. Thalberg were determined to demonstrate the new studio's powers by casting two stars -- John Gilbert and Lon Chaney -- as well as new Thalberg-find Norma Shearer, and employing the celebrated Swedish director Victor Seastrom. The story tells of a scientist (Chaney) who laughs in hysterical disbelief when he realizes that his benefactor has stolen not only his research but also his wife, and whose face is frozen into a fixed grin. He can go on living only as a circus clown, an object of mockery and abuse. Literally wearing his heart on his sleeve, he falls hopelessly in love with Consuela (Shearer), the bareback rider. In his second Hollywood picture, Seastrom demonstrates his continuing mastery of subtle lighting effects and Expressionist devices. If future MGM productions are of the same caliber of He Who Gets Slapped, the company's future looks rosy. Paris, 12 November: Max Linder is taking a stand against the invasion of American films in France. His attitude is exacerbated by United Artists' opposition to the American release of his last film, Au Secours directed by Abel Gance. Berlin, 13 November: Release of Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks) by Leo Birinski and Paul Leni, in which the owner of a Wax Museum (John Gottowt) needs for three of his models' stories to be told to the audience. For that reason he has hired a poet (William Dieterle), who after one look at the owner's pretty daughter (Olga Belajeff), starts writing stories featuring the models, the daughter and himself. In the first, he is a baker, married to the girl, who flirts a bit too much with the customers, among them the vizir of sultan Harun Al-Rashid (Emil Jannings), who has just ordered the baker's execution because the smell from the bakery is drifting to his palace; yet Harun Al-Rashid wants to meet the beautiful girl himself, while the angry baker is trying to get the Sultan's whishing ring to proof he's not a weakling... The second story is about Czar Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt) who, in the company of his court alchemist, likes watching people die. When he orders the execution of the alchemist, the alchemist thinks of a nice revenge, but until the revenge works, a nobleman is murdered, his daughter kidnapped by Ivan and her groom tortured. While writing the third story about Jack the Ripper (Werner Krauss), the writer falls asleep and dreams that he and the girl are pursuit by that serial killer. -- Stephan Eichenberg, IMDb Paris, 15 November: American actress Gloria Swanson has arrived in France to star in Madame Sans-Géne for director Léonce Perret. Hollywood, 21 November: The leading figures in Hollywood, including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Harold Lloyd and Marion Davies, gathered today for the funeral of producer and director Thomas Harper Ince. Ince's body was cremated without an autopsy, which makes the circumstances surrounding his death all the more mysterious. Ince was among the party that included Chaplin aboard the yacht owned by news tycoon William Randolph Hearst. He was taken ashore, supposedly suffering from "indigestion," and died at his Hollywood home. Rumors are circulating that the indigeston was caused by a bullet fired by Hearst, who had mistaken Ince for Chaplin whom he has suspected of having an affair with his mistress, Marion Davies. Paris, 28 November: Preview of Raymond Bernard's historical fresco The Miracle of the Wolves, featuring 20 savage wolves. New York, 4 December: Louis B. Mayer and Irving G. Thalberg have refused to release the initial 20-reel version of Greed. Instead, a 10-reel version disowned by Erich von Stroheim was shown at the preview. Moscow, 10 December: The centralization of the Soviet film industry has finally been achieved with the creation of Sovkino. The move is planned to give new impetus to flagging film production by attracting increased financial backing from the government. Hollywood, 13 December: The young actor Clark Gable has gotten married to his drama teacher Josephine Dillon. She is 14 years his senior. Berlin, 23 December: The Berlin public now has the chance to see Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), F. W. Murnau's finest film since Nosferatu, two years ago. This moving drama is very different from the earlier horror film. Although Expressionist in manner, The Last Laugh is nearer to the Kammerspielfilm (chamber film), which focuses on ordinary people and events, while containing an element of social criticism. The entire story, of an old hotel doorman reduced to working as a lavatory attendant, is told without any titles. As the role is played by that imposing and expressive star, Emil Jannings, no words on the screen seem necessary. After various larger-then-life characters such as Peter the Great and Nero, it is good to see this great actor playing a pathetic figure. New York, 31 December: The most successful films of the year are: The Sea Hawk, Secrets, The Thief of Bagdad and Girl Shy. Italy, 31 December: This entire year's output of film production does not exceed 20 titles (as compared to 921 films in 1912 and 220 in 1920): the Italian cinema is dying. Zurich, 31 December: A production company, Praesens Film, has been set up by Lazare Wechsler, an engineer and aviation pioneer of Polish origin.