- Paris, 1 January: A prefectorial order provides for a ban on the projection of films made of flammable material.
- Berlin, 10 January:
 Fritz Lang's eagerly-awaited new film Metropolis was shown at the UFA Palast in the presence of 2,500 guests, among them the Chancellor Wilhelm Mars, the ministers Gustav Streseman and Otto Gessler and the head of the Reichsbank Hjalmar Schacht. This long (three-and-a-half hours) movie cost nearly 5 million marks and required 11 months to complete -- a record for a German production. It is a work of science fiction that takes place in the year 2000 in a gigantic city called Metropolis. Exploited by the factory owner who treats them like slaves, the down-trodden workers prepare for a rebellion. Only the charisma of one young woman, Maria (Brigitte Helm), prevents it. However, opposing her is a mad scientists (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), who has created a robot, a perfect replica of young Maria. The robot, or 'false Maria,' succeeds in stirring up the workers and in pushing the people to revolt. Happily all turns out well: the robot is destroyed, the workers recover their freedom, and the young woman is married to the industrialist's son.
 The scenario, both ambitious and also surprisingly naïve, was inspired by New York and its skyscrapers, which Lang remembered from a visit to the US in November 1924. After the success of The Niebelungen, the director, with his wife Thea von Harbou, started work on the futuristic story. Filming began in May 1925 in the UFA studios in Neubabelsberg. From the start, the plan to build hugh, cumbersome sets gave way to the use of miniatures, thanks to the Schüfftan process. Developed by the cameraman Eugen Schüfftan, it is a means of combining live action with models or artwork. A mirror mounted in front of the camera at an angle of 45° to the optical axis both reflects light and allows light to pass through. Beyond the mirror, in line with the camera axis, is placed a full-size detail of the set at 90° to the camera so that it is reflected into the camera lens by the mirror. A mask is then put on the back of the mirror over that area from which only the reflected image is required; the rest of the model remains visible through the mirror. By using this method, a great deal of money was saved. But, in order to show the huge cast to best advantage, Erich Pommer, the artistic director of UFA, agreed that parts of the city had to be constucted. Unfortunately, these turned out to be extremely costly to build, and probably led to his falling out of favor. The Tower of Babel scene, shot at Rehbergen, alone needed several weeks' filming, sometimes taking 16 hours a day, and the flooding of the basements required many months of hard labor. It is hoped that the likely success of the film will help keep UFA afloat, because its shares have been declining recently.
Use this link to view a 4-minute compilation from Giorgio MoroderÕs 1984 version of Metropolis -- 13.2 MB, MPEG format.
- Paris, 18 January: New studios have been inaugurated by the producer Bernard Natan in rue Francœur, and Henri Diamant-Berger is there to direct a new film, The Education of the Prince, with Edna Purviance.
- Paris, 25 January: Marcel L'Herbier has commenced work again on Le Diable du cœur in Gaumont's Buttes-Chaumont studios. Filming was interrupted by Betty Balfour's illness and the death of the actor Mévisto.
- Prague, 31 January: The Czechoslovakian League has proposed a program of action to protect national creativity.
- Hollywood, 31 January: Eastman-Kodak held a meeting for professionals to promote the use of panchromatic film.
- New York, 5 February:
 The director Clarence Badger's new film carries the shortest of titles, It. Exactly what "It" is remains a matter of lively debate, but Elinor Glyn, the romantic novelist who has coined the expression, affirms that it's a magnetic quality that is found in emancipated women. And as far as Glyn is concerned, Clara Bow is the only actress capable of capturing this elusive attribute on the screen. Most male filmgoers have a notion that "It" is just another word for good old-fashioned sex appeal, an attribute that the ripe-bodied, saucer-eyed Bow has got in abundance. Clara, a former beauty queen, has come a long way fast since breaking into films in 1923 in Down to the Sea in Ships, after director Elmer Clifton spotted her photograph in a fan magazine. She was taken up by independent producer B. P. Schulberg, who cast her in over a dozen films in 1925, including The Plastic Age, in which she was billed as "The Hottest Jazz Baby in Films." Clara then accompanied Schulberg to Paramount where she scored a big hit with Mantrap, as a bored housewife contemplating an affair with lawyer Percy Marmont. By now Bow was a big enough star for It to be built around her vibrant sexuality. It's no more than a flimsy vehicle, featuring just a walk-on part for Miss Glyn, in which Bow races around energetically as a shopgirl who sets her eye on handsome storeowner Antonio Moreno, but it has established her as the queen of the Paramount lot. Barreling down Wilshire Boulevard in her red roadster, Jazz Baby Bow is the embodiment of the frantic spirit of the age. Indeed, her private amours are causing comment!
- New York, 5 February:
 Also released into theaters today is Buster Keaton's The General from United Artists. This film is Keaton's personal favorite, and it is certainly destined to become one of the silent screen's great comedies. The plot is based on a true story about a group of Union spies in the South who steal a locomotive and head north, sabotaging everything on their way. The train, named "The General", is recovered by its engineer, Johnny Gray (Keaton), who is the focus of Keaton's story. The state of Tennessee refused Keaton permission to use the actual locomotive on display at the Chattanooga station because they disliked the idea of a comedy about the Civil War. The filming (in Oregon) required 17 carloads of equipment from Hollywood and the services of 500 extras, the Oregon National Guard and 125 horses. In his quest for accuracy, Keaton used a real firebox in close-ups of the engineer's cab, which resulted in a forest fire. The scene in which the engine "Texas" collapses into a river was done in a single take at a cost of $42,000. While most of the films of this time use as many as 100 title cards each, The General features fewer than 50 in its eight reels. Since the film is initially blasted by critics and ignored by audiences, Keaton will lose much of the creative freedom he has enjoyed in the past. But, the film will receive the honors it deserves decades later.
- New York, 8 February: King Vidor has been shooting The Crowd here, with Eleanor Boardman. The film is in a similar realist vein to The Big Parade.
- London, 14 February:
 Ivor Novello, the handsome leading man from London's West End theater, stars as a suspected murderer, a real modern-day Jack the Ripper, in Gainsborough's The Lodger -- a heart-stopping thriller helmed by the promising 25-year-old director Alfred Hitchcock, who was formerly the head of the titles department at the London branch of Paramount. The casting of matinee idol Novello in the part of the gentlemanly lodger caused much comment when it was announced, but it has now been hailed as a masterstroke, with Novello giving a superb performance. The Bioscope has also praised the film, which is full of daring touches, as possibly "the finest British production ever made." The young director appears for a fleeting moment in on of the scenes in The Lodger, filling in for an extra who failed to turn up. Will he make a habit of stepping in front of the camera in his future films?
- Paris, 11 March: Inauguration of the Museum of Photography and Cinematography at the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts.
- Paris, 12 March: Bernard Natan and Louis Albert have started work on the production of The Life of Joan of Arc, to be filmed by Marco de Gastyne. For the lead role, they are looking for "a young brunette of good height with equestrian experience."
- Ukraine, 23 March: Alexander Dovzhendo's first full-length film, The Diplomatic Pouch, has been filmed here for Odessa productions.
- Paris, 31 March: The young filmmaker Marc Allégret has finished the cutting on his short documentary, Voyage to the Congo. André Gide assisted on the Jean Renoir production in which a Parvo Debrie movie camera was used.
- Paris, 7 April:
 Abel Gance's big historical fresco Napoléon opened triumphantly last night at the Opéra. The copy shown, which runs for a lengthy three-and-a-quarter hours, was specially produced for the occasion. French cinema alone could not have undertaken the financing of a work of this size, thus Gance began by knocking on numerous foreign doors. Unfortunately, the financial aid he obtained, notably from the Italian producer Giuseppe Barattolo, turned out to be insufficient. Then a miracle occurred. Two international financiers offered their assistance: the Russian emigré Vladimir Wengeroff and the German Hugo Stinnes. They were joined by investors from Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Spain, Great Britain and, of course, France -- in the form of Pathé Cinéma. On 19 May 1924, the co-producers created an association of members to subscribe part of the necessary capital (140 shares at 50,000 francs each). Nevertheless, the bankruptcy of the Stinnes Group, following the sudden death of Hugo Stinnes, disrupted this new financial scheme. Gance had to exert a great deal of time and effort during four months in order to keep the massive project afloat, but it was taken up again in November with the aid of Société Générale de Films.
- Los Angeles, 10 April:
 Whey-faced little Harry Langdon is emerging as a serious rival to Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. In his third feature film, Long Pants, Langdon demonstrates an original comic genius as he pursues a "fast" woman from the big city instead of marrying his childhoood sweetheart, who of course waits for her man to come to his senses. Langdon first went into films with Mack Sennett in 1923 after over 20 years as an entertainer, best known for an act in which a baby-faced man presides over the collapse of his automobile. At the Sennett studio, director Harry Edwards and gagmen Arthur Ripley and Frank Capra developed the character for the screen, "just a crumb from the sponge cake of life," as he was introduced in a Sennett short, Saturday Afternoon (1926). But then Langdon left Sennett for a six-picture deal with First National, taking his three collaborators with him. Edwards directed his first feature, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), a big hit co-starring Joan Crawford, and Capra took over for The Strong Man and Long Pants. Now Langdon has fired Capra and will direct himself.
- Paris, 14 April:
 Great crowds gathered this evening at the Marvaux Theatre for the first showing to the general public of Abel Gance's Napoléon, in its full-length version consisting of around 15,000 metres. The film contains six episodes that depict the life of Napoléon Bonaparte (Albert Dieudonné): his childhood, his military schooling, and his rise to power. The idea for the film came to Gance in 1921 after he had seen, and been immensely impressed by, D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. In addition, the French director wanted to create a national fresco. In the year of the centenary of the death of Napoléon, his choice of subject could not have been more appropriate. This important page in French history lends itself perfectly to visual evocation, displaying all the resources of the cinema. When the choice of subject was made, Gance, by the curious phenomenon of mimicry, transformed himself into a leader of men, exercising an extraordinary influence over his collaborators and interpreters. After years of preparation, shooting began in January 1925 and finished the following August. At the end, nearly 450,000 metres of film had been exposed by 18 cameras. These were used in countless ways: carried at arms length, attached to swings, strapped to a horse's back, and sent into the air in balloons. Given the immense quantity of film used, the editing alone required almost a year. The results show that Gance has extended the limits of the cinema, thanks to the many inventions and technical innovations. On occasion, three scenes are juxtaposed on a screen simultaneously. This process has given unequaled scope to sequences such as the departure for the Italian campaign. And the most impressive symbolic set-piece sees Bonaparte sailing back from Corsica in a storm while the storm in the Convention rages.
Use this link to view a scene from Napoléon -- 560 kB, MPEG format.
- New York, 19 April:
 Cecil B. De Mille's new film The King of Kings has just opened here at the Gaiety Theater. Coming three-and-a-half years after his triumph with The Ten Commandments, the director turned to the Bible once again and has produced yet another large-scale epic of ancient times. During the intervening years a lot has happened to Mr. De Mille. His continuing difficulties with the management of Famous Players-Lasky (or Paramount) finally led to a break with this giant studio that he himself had helped found in the mid-teens. He left the company early in 1925, at a time when the trend in Hollwood was firmly pointing to a greater concentration of power in the large companies. However, once he had decided to buck the system, De Mille quickly succeeded in establishing himself as a leading independent producer and director. Aided by his friends on Wall Street, he purchased the old Ince studios and began releasing his films through the then newly-reorganized Producers Distributing Company (PDC). As production head of the studio, he helped plan and supervise the work of other directors (Alan Hale, William C. De Mille, Victor Heerman, Donald Crisp and many others) in addition to turning out his own films. The lavish execution of his latest project, The King of Kings, reflects the success he has made of his independence.
- New York, 28 April: The German actor Emil Jannings has made his first film in America, The Way of All Flesh, directed by Victor Fleming.
- Alexandria, 5 May: Screening in this city of A Kiss from Alexandria, directed, acted in and produced by Bader Ibrahim and his brother Lama.
- Los Angeles, 11 May: Founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the instigation of Louis B. Mayer.
- France, 16 May: Maurice Tourneur is on location at Le Bourget to film the flying scenes for L'Equipage (The Crew), adapted from the book by Joseph Kessel.
- Paris, 16 May: Adolph Zukor has named the new movie theater being built on the boulevard des Italiens, the Paramount.
- Hollywood, 19 May:
 Today sees the formal opening of super-showman Sid Grauman's Chinese Theater. Just over a year ago the ground for the theater was broken with a gold-plated shovel by Norma Talmadge. Now, its green bronze pagoda roof towers above a spectacular forecourt in which two large stone dogs stand guard at the entrace to this temple of cinema. In front of the stone dogs a bronze statue symbolizes the human genius of poetry and drama. Last night the theatre was the venue for a special premiere of director Cecil B. De Mille's The King of Kings before a select audience of 2,000. Outside, a crowd of 50,000 gathered. There was equal billing for Grauman, De Mille and Christ, in that order.
- France, 31 May: Director Jean Renoir was lucky to escape from a nasty accident in the forest of Fontainebleau. The car was driven by his friend, actor Pierre Champagne, who was killed on impact. He had failed to take a difficult bend in the road. Poachers, who happened to be on the scene, took the director to the hospital.
- Hollywood, 28 June: Louis B. Mayer has renewed Greta Garbo's MGM contract at a salary of $5,000 per week.
- Paris, 30 June: Germaine Dulac is making La Coquille et le clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman), with Antonin Artaud, who also wrote the script.
- Paris, 6 July: Gaumont has brought out an aluminum camera with variable speed intended for use by news reporters.
- Hollywood, 20 August:
 Josef von Sternberg has at last won out after a series of humiliations. His film Underworld is an enormous success. He was asked to make the film by Paramount's B. P. Schulberg from a script written by Ben Hecht, a journalist who has inside knowledge of the film's criminal milieu. "The thing to do," said Hecht, "was to skip the heroes and heroines, to write a movie containing only villains and bawds. I would not have to tell any lies then."
 - Hollywood, 22 August: Charlie Chaplin has just concluded the messiest of divorces from Lita Grey, whom he married in 1924. The settlement requires Chaplin to pay Lita a lump sum of $600,000 and set up trust funds of $100,000 for each of his sons, one-year-old Sydney Earle and the two-year-old Charles Spencer. The long and bitter divorce case that followed Lita Grey's departure from the Chaplin home with her children last November has attracted lurid headlines and much prurient public attention. The complaint filed by Lita ran to 52 pages in length, and much of its grubbing detail was aimed at destroying Chaplin's reputation in the eyes of the public still shocked by both the Arbuckle and William Desmond Taylor scandals. Pirated copies of the complaint have been widely circulated. Earlier this month Lita threatened to name five "prominent women" with whom her husband had affairs during their marriage. This threat precipitated the cash settlement, the largest thus far in American legal history. Chaplin's hair turned white during the ordeal and now has to be dyed for filming. But his fans remain loyal.
- Geneva, 23 August: Thousands of demonstrators, who were protesting against the execution of the Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Boston, have vandalized movie theaters advertising American films.
- London, 23 August: Rudolph Valentino fans have created an association to help circulate his films and to do good deeds "in memory of the period when he was without friends or money."
- New York, 28 August:
 Premiere of Victor Fleming's Hula from Paramount, starring the "It" Girl Clara Bow as Hula Calhoun, the daughter of a pineapple plantation owner in Hawaii, who sets her sights on a married English engineer (Clive Brook). Cinemagoers get to watch Bow skinnydip and perform a sexy hula dance (that looks more like the Charleston).
- Hollywood, 28 August: Projection of Three's a Crowd, the directorial debut of Harry Langdon.
- Washington, 9 September: As the result of a six-year inquiry into the block-booking system, the Federal Trade Commission has ordered the Famous Players-Lasky production company to stop the practice, which they belief to be restrictive and monopolistic.
- Los Angeles, 21 September: Release of Wings, the first Hollywood film dealing with the subject of military aviation. The ace flyer William Wellman directed.
 - Berlin, 23 September: Release of Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin - Symphony of a Great City), by Walter Ruttman, based on an idea by Karl Freund. The title says it all: this is a visual symphony in five movements celebrating the Berlin of 1927: the people, the place, the everyday details of life on the streets. Director Walter Ruttman, an experimental filmmaker, approaches cinema in similar ways to his Russian contemporary Dziga Vertoz, mixing documentary, abstract, and expressionist modes for a non-narrative style that captures the life of his countrymen. But where Vertov mixes his observations with examples of the communist dream in action, Ruttman re-creates documentary as, in his own words, "a melody of pictures." Within the loose structure of a day in the life of the city (with a prologue that travels from the country into the city on a barreling train), the film takes us from dawn to dusk, observing the silent city as it awakens with a bustle of activity, then the action builds and calms until the city settles back into sleep. But the city is as much the architecture, the streets, and the machinery of industry as it is people, and Ruttman weaves all these elements together to create a portrait in montage, the poetic document of a great European city captured in action. Held together by rhythm, movement, and theme, Ruttman creates a documentary that is both involving and beautiful to behold. -- Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
- Nice, 30 September: Franco-Film have bought out the Victorine Studios.
- New York, 6 October:
 Wild excitement has greeted the premiere of Warner Brothers' The Jazz Singer, the first motion picture in which spoken dialogue is heard. The studio had been in serious financial difficulties for some time. But, emboldened by the success of their John Barrymore vehicle, Don Juan, released last summer and the first feature film to use Warners' Vitaphone sound-on-disc system for sound effects and synchronized score, they staked everything on The Jazz Singer. The story of a cantor's son torn between the synagogue and show business, The Jazz Singer was originally a stage hit for George Jessel, who had already appeared for the studio in a 1926 silent picture entitled Izzy Murphy. Jessel wanted too much money to move into the uncharted territory of the "talkers," and comedian Eddie Cantor proved to be equally unwilling. Consequently, Warners turned to the greatest entertainer in the world, Al Jolson, who agreed to play the role of Jakie Rabinowitz for a fee of $75,000. It was inspired casting because Jolson brings all his legendary attack to a piece of undiluted schmaltz, which remains a silent film on to which certain songs and snatches of dialogue, most of the latter improvised, have been none too subtly grafted. However, the moment that Jolson launched himself into "Toot, Toot, Tootsie Goodbye" and the show-stopping blackface "Mammy" routine, the audience went wild. And when he told them, "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" pandemonium broke out in the theater. It's unfortunate that none of the four Warner brothers was able to attend this successful premiere. Tragically, Sam Warner, the driving force behind the Vitaphone experiment, died of pneumonia just 24 hours earlier. Harry, Albert and Jack Warner traveled immediately by train to Los Angeles for the funeral, missing a historic, and clearly defining, moment in a new era of cinema.
- Tokyo, 14 October: Yasujiro Ozu's first film, Zange no yaiba (The Sword of Penitence), is now screening.
- Hollywood, 22 October: Howard Hughes, the Texan industrialist, continues his involvement with the movie industry with the production of Two Arabian Knights. Lewis Milestone is the director.
 - New York, 6 November: Rayart releases Wanderer of the West. This silent western, starring First National star Ken Maynard's brother Kermit (billed as "Tex" Maynard), delivers an early (and common) portrayal of homosexuality: A stereotyped sissy foil to provide contrast with the other more masculine men. One of its title cards: "Clarence, the clerk -- one of Nature's mistakes in a country where men were men". It is one in a series of six Maynard oaters released by Rayart.
- Paris, 9 November: La Vie sans joie (aka Catherine), filmed by Albert Dieudonné in 1924 with Cathering Hessling and based on a scenario by Jean Renoir, has been released at last.
- Cairo, 16 November: Aziza Amir and Wedad Orfy have released Laila, the first film from their new production company.
- Paris, 19 November: MGM's Ben-Hur, directed by Fred Niblo, has moved into the 32nd week of an exclusive run at the Madeleine Opera. Ticket sales already exceed 4 million francs.
- New York, 29 November:
 With the quality of films such as Nosferatu and The Last Laugh, F. W. Murnau established himself as on of the great German directors. Now he is being placed on an equal footing with the most talented of his American colleagues. Seduced by The Last Laugh, William Fox did not wait long to invite the brilliant young cinéaste to come and work for his company. The "German Genius" arrived here together with two of his habitual collaborators, scenarist Carl Mayer and set designer and costumer Rochus Gliese. Side by side, the trio worked on their first American film, Sunrise, which the Carthay Circle Theater is showing at a gala premiere. Despite the fact that Fox imposed certain scenes and a happy ending against the director's will, as well as cutting the film by 20 minutes, it remains a splendid work. Sunrise is a poetic melodrama, adapted from the German writer Hermann Sudermann, about a farmer's wife (Janet Gaynor) whose husband, played by actor George O'Brien, is urged to drown her by a city woman. But the husband thinks better of it, and the couple go on a second honeymoon to the metropolis. The most impressive sequence is the trip to the big city by trolley car, where she sits transfixed while the scenery whizzes by.
- Montreal, 4 December: A parish letter from 17 archbishops and bishops from the province of Quebec forbids Catholics to go to the cinema on Sundays.
- Los Angeles, 23 December:
 Since its premiere in August, Wings, with its spectacular and unfaked aerial sequences, has had a rapturous reception whenever it is shown, and is now set for a nationwide general release early next month. Paramount executives, who took a $2 million chance on young director and ace flying man William Wellman, are rubbing their hands in glee at the box-office lines. The cast, too, have reason to be delighted. Clara Bow, of course, is already established as a Hollywood star. But small-part player Gary Cooper, following his success in The Winning of Barbara Worth, excels in his one scene and has been signed to a contract, while Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen are no longer up-and-comers but have arrived.
- New York, 31 December: Due to its investment in talking pictures and the triumph of The Jazz Singer, Warner Bros. is out of the red for the first time in two years.
- Poland, 31 December: Léon Trystan, a virulent young theater critic and a disciple of the theories of Abel Gance and Jean Epstein, has filmed Bunt krwi i zelaza (The Revolt of Blood and Iron).
- Paris, 31 December: The journalist Jean-Placide Mauclaire has opened a cinema for avant-garde films, Studio 28, on the Butte Montmartre.
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20 February - Miami, FL,