 - 2 January, New York: Paramount releases Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Fredric March in the title role(s). It is based on the history of William Deacon Brodie, a successful Edinburgh tradesman who, by night, had a second life as a thief and carouser. Brodie, who ultimately hanged for his crimes -- despite a near-successful escape and an ingenious scheme to cheat the gallows --fascinated Robert Louis Stevenson, who heard the story from his childhood nurse. Stevenson was only a modestly successful author at the time, his output limited by chronic lung problems. But the story has it that following a nightmare he wrote the "penny-dreadful" novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in 1885, only to have his wife throw it into the fireplace out of horror. Not so much because of the tone of the novel, but perhaps more, because Stevenson had this dual personality within him. If she, as some stories tell, later encouraged him to rewrite it, or if he did it by himself, is unknown. But rewritten it was, and the work was immensely successful, making Stevenson an international literary celebrity, ultimately earning the author and his heirs a small fortune. Today it is considered one of the classic horror tales, alongside Dracula and Frankenstein. Unlike the other tales, Jekyll/Hyde is based upon man himself, the duality of man, part good, part evil.
 The novella was adapted for a stage play by Luella Forepaugh and George F. Fish in 1897, but Stevenson was displeased with how loosely this was based on his novel. It extended things beyond the all-male world of the book, giving Jekyll a girlfriend; it added a supernatural dimension, with the ghost of Sir Danvers Carew appearing; featured one actor playing both Jekyll and Hyde (Stevenson would have preferred two actors, as Hyde in the novel was much smaller and younger than Jekyll); and pronounced Jekyll as 'jeckle' rather than Stevenson's preferred 'jeekle'. Most of the ideas associated with this play have stuck. Prostitutes are the typical victims for Hyde in the films. This is partly influenced by the Jack the Ripper murders, which took place around the time of the play, leading people to believe that the Ripper had been influenced by the play. The first screen version of the story appeared in March of 1920, with John Barrymore in the leading role, directed by John S. Robertson at Famous Players-Lasky. This was quickly followed the following April by Pioneer studio's 40-minute version directed by J. Charles Haydon and starring Sheldon Lewis. In Mamoulian's version the conflict is between the modern (civilized) and the primitive man, where Hyde is given the characteristics of a Neanderthal. In this pre-Code production Miriam Hopkins is a prostitute (as in the play), strips naked in front of the camera, and even licks the cloak of Hyde (a most provocative image).
- 20 January, Paris:
 The debut film by the poet and novelist Jean Cocteau was shown to the public for the first time at a gala evening held at Vieux-Colombier. Originally tltled The Life of the Poet, this medium-length movie is now called The Blood of the Poet. It was financed by the Viscount Charles de Noailles, Cocteau's friend, and was shot between April and September 1930. It is a poetic reverie in four episodes, in which a young poet passes through a mirror into another world where he finds his muse. Enrique Rivero plays the poet with Lee Miller as his muse. It is already referred to as "salon surrealism."
- 20 January, New York: Hiram S. Brown has resigned as president of RKO. He will be replaced by the president of the NBC radio network, Merlin Aylesworth.
- 2 February, Hollywood: Joe Brandt, Columbia's president, had sold his interest in the company to Jack Cohn and his brother Harry Cohn, who is now both head of the studio and the company president.
- 17 February, Los Angeles: Release of Shanghai Express, directed by Josef von Sternberg, with Marlene Dietrich and Clive Brook.
- 24 February, Berlin:
 Leni Riefenstahl, the leading actress in four of Arnold Fanck's mountain films, has turned to directing. Her first venture, Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light), is of a similar romantic vein, shot on location and emphasizing a Germanic mystical union with nature. Riefenstahl herself plays a young woman who is thought to be a witch because she alone in the Dolomite village can reach the top of a dangerous peak. A painter falls in love with her, but when he discovers her secret route to the summit, she jumps to her death. The film's strongest point is the magnificent alpine photography by Hans Schneeberger.
- 28 February, Hollywood: Cecil B. De Mille has left MGM to return to Paramount, the company he helped found. Paramount will be financing and distributing all of his future screen projects.
- February, London: The film director of Hungarian origin, Alexander Korda, has been made Paramount's representative in Great Britain and has created a production firm, London Films.
- 3 March, Shanghai: Japanese bombs have destroyed numerous movie theaters and studios. Thirty companies have ceased production.
- 10 March, Paris: Abel Gance in association with André Debrie, the inventor of the Parvo movie camera, has lodged a new application to the patent office for his Perspective Sound process.
- 14 March, Rochester, NY: Death of the industrialist George Eastman, founder and president of Eastman-Kodak as well as the inventor of flexible film with celluloid-reinforced perforations.
- 16 March, Mexico:
 Finally, after a month of waiting at the Mexican border, exit visas have been issued to Sergei Eisenstein and his two comrades, photographer Edouard Tissé and assistant Grigori Aleksandrov. Thus an unhappy escapade has come to an end. After the 1930 rupture with Paramount, Eisenstein joyfully accepted the offer of the left-wing novelist Upton Sinclair to finance a documentary to be shot in Mexico called ¡Que Viva Mexico!, destined to tell the thousand-year history of the country divided into four thematically related episodes: The Aztec and Maya Empire, the Spanish Conquest, Colonialization and Revolution. Eisenstein had long wanted to make a film in Mexico, and so approached the novelist on the advice of Charles Chaplin. In fact, it was Sinclair's wife who backed the project, appointing her brother Hunter Kimbrough as producer. But things began badly when, upon their arrival on 8 December 1930, the trio was imprisoned for one day. Eventually, the film got under way, but as time passed they got bogged down, and Sinclair had to put pressure on them to finish. Eisenstein's project was far more grandiose than the Sinclairs had envisaged, and he greatly exceeded his schedule and modest budget. In November 1931, the novelist even received a telegram from Stalin saying that Eisenstein "is considered a deserter, who has broken with his fatherland." Unfortunately, Sinclair was forced to withdraw his finances at the beginning of this year, owing to lack of resources. Therefore, after two-and-a-half years' absence, Eisenstein is returning to Moscow. His situation looks black after having failed to make any films in Hollywood and leaving the Mexican film unfinished.
- 17 March, Paris: The president of the republic Paul Doumer attended the premiere of Raymond Bernard's film Les Croix de bois (The Wooden Crosses), based on the novel by Roland Dorgelès about the Great War.
- 25 March, New York:
 Cinema's sixth and latest Tarzan is former Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller, the man who scooped a total of five gold medals at the 1924 and 1928 games. In 1929, undefeated and acknowledged as the world's finest swimmer, Johnny turned professional, appearing in a series of aquatic extravaganzas and a number of short swimming films. MGM sat up and took notice then quickly moved in to screem-test the brawnily handsome Olympian when the actor they had signed for a new Tarzan adventure fell ill. Everything went swimmingly, and Metro signed Weissmuller at $250 a week to star as Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle hero in Tarzan the Ape Man. Co-starring as Jane is the sparky Maureen O'Sullivan and the directing is capably handled by W. S. "Woody" Van Dyke, known throughout the film world as "One-Shot Woody." Weissmuller's back-projected exploits in the studio jungle play fast and loose with Burroughs' original creation, whose novels portrayed the ape man as the cultivated Lord Greystroke. In contrast, Weissmuller's dialogue is confined to grunts and monosyllables. But Johnny's blithe ability to let his athletic torso do the talking has made the film a hit. MGM has signed him for seven more films.
 - 12 April, New York: MGM's Grand Hotel, directed by Edmund Goulding, is premiered today at the Astor Theater. Adapted from Vicky Baum's novel of a luxurious Berlin hotel, where "nothing ever happens," the film and its unprecedented roster of stars set out to prove precisely the opposite as the characters tangle with each other. Greta Garbo is a lonely ballerina; John Barrymore is her jewel-thief lover; Lionel Barrymore a harassed little pen pusher; Joan Crawford a brassily ambitious stenographer; Wallace Beery a ruthless businessman; and, observing all the comings and goings, Lewis Stone. This galaxy of stars gave the studio some ticklish problems. By all accounts Joan Crawford declined to be a team player, delaying filming by playing records of Dietrich (supposedly Garbo's great rival). Billing also required some extremely careful handling. Garbo's contract stipulates that she alone has top billing in her films. As a means of honoring this clause while at the same time not upsetting her co-stars, MGM suggested that "Garbo" should appear alone at the top of the bill and be followed by the full names of the others. Few can remember a film so excitedly anticipated as Grand Hotel. It seems to have won an instant place in film history. The New York Times has called it "the most important film since the arrival of talking pictures," and a Morning Post headline claims that the film is "Screen Art at its Highest." Some are less impressed: Sydney Carroll thinks the film "only worth seeing as a drum-beating exhibition of stars... each and all of them miscast."
- 21 April, Germany: In response to public protest, authorities have lifted the ban on Slatan Dudow's film Kulde Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt? (Kuhle Wampe or: To Whom Does the World Belong?), based on a scenario by Berholt Brecht and starring Herta Thiele.
- 6 May, Copenhagen:
 Denmark's Carl Theodor Dreyer has ventured into sound cinema. A perfectionist who is well-known for falling out with his backers, he has endured idleness through lack of funds since his brilliant The Passion Joan of Arc was released four years ago. Now comes Vampyr, a horror film whose atmospheric treatment of the supernatural, aided by magnificent photography by Rudolph Maté and Louis Née and spare but effective dialogue, surpasses most of its predecessors. Financed by Nicolas De Gunzberg, a Dutch baron and amateur actor who insisted on playing the leading role under the pseudonym Julian West, Vampyr was made entirely on location near Paris in French, German and English.
- 19 May, New York: Release of Howard Hawks' Scarface, with Paul Muni. Hawks played a role and produced the film.
- 27 May, Tokyo: Because of the success of Mushibameru haru (Lost Springtime), Mikio Naruse can be considered one of the most talented Japanese directors.
- 1 June, Hamburg: The negatives of Aleksandrov & Eisenstein's ¡Que Viva Mexico!, which were on the way from America to Moscow, have been intercepted in transit on novelist Upton Sinclair's orders and sent back to Hollywood.
- 3 June, Tokyo:
 The 29-year-old Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu has produced his finest movie to date. Otona no mire ehon - Umarete wa mita kareda (I Was Born, But...) is a fine example of shomingeki, or lower-middle class domestic drama. The story tells of two boys, ages ten and eight, who watch their beloved father kowtowing to his boss and playing the fool in order to ingratiate himself. Disgusted, the boys go on a hunger strike until things become clearer to them. Although I Was Born, But... reflects the melancholy theme of tainted innocence, it is also wonderfully humorous, and the children -- Hideo Sugahara and Tomio Aoki (billed as "Tokkan-Kozou") -- are a delight. Ozu has been directing for five years, and this is the third of his films with a similar qualified title, following I Graduated, But... (1929) and I Flunked, But... (1930), all of which center on the concerns of young students. Ozu's many films about college life might be accounted for by the fact that he himself never had one. However, his interest in the Japanese family derives from his own experience of a close-knit domestic unit. Not very stron on plot, Ozu prefers to focus on a narrow area, using a simple by affecting style.
- 28 June, Hollywood: The Movietone City studios, built by Fox on West Pico Boulevard, have been inaugurated. They consist of 10 huge movie sets and numberous large outbuildings.
- 18 August, Munich: Premiere of Die verkaufte Braut (The Bartered Bride), adapted from Smetana's comic opera by Max Ophüls, with Jarmila Novotna and Karl Valentin.
- 21 August, Venice:
 For two years, there has been the American International Film Festival, and now Italy has decided to stage its own film festival: the International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art (or "Mostra") -- in Venice. The Biennale of Art in Venice has displayed the artistic trends in Europe, revealing that the public is avid for novelty. The idea of inviting film to play its part emanated from the scuptor Antonio Mariani. The Mostra opened its doors on 6 August on the Lido and presented 29 films from many different countries. Audience favorites included Nikolai Ekk's The Road to Life (USSR), René Clair's À nous la liberté (France) and Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (USA).
 - 31 August, Hollywood: MGM, smarting at Universal's success with Dracula and Frankenstein, has entered the horror race with Freaks, directed by Tod Browning. However, in their letting Browning loose, the studio has got rather more than it bargained for. Browning, who was Lon Chaney's favorite director, has fashioned a carnival of horrors among the cripples who eke a miserable living in a circus sideshow. A midget, played by Harry Earles, inherits a fortune and marries the circus' beautiful trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). Included among the guests at the wedding banquet are Raudian the Living Torso, Coo-Koo the Bird Woman and Robinson the Living Skeleton. But these characters owe nothing to makeup -- they are the real thing. When Cleopatra cheats on her tiny husband, his friends take terrible revenge, transforming her into a human chicken. Irving G. Thalberg, the studio's head of production, was horrified when he saw the result, ordering it to be cut to just over an hour in the belief that audiences would not be able to handle any more. He also inserted an introduction that stated that the film was offered with "humility" to all those who have suffered. Freaks has been banned in Britain and in many states in America.
- 5 September, Hollywood:
 The writer-director (and uncredited producer of Grand Hotel) Paul Bern has committed suicide at his Benedict Canyon home, leaving his wife of just over two months, Jean Harlow, widowed at the age of 21. After an early marriage to Charles F. McGrew, which ended in divorce when she was 18, Harlow married Bern at the beginning of July this year. The dead man, who had dated comedienne Mabel Normand in 1923-24, has left no explanation for taking his own life. However, after his marriage to Harlow, word quickly spread that Bern was sexually inadequate and he had taken his life when even marriage to Hollywood's reigning sex goddess failed to arouse him. His death was quickly ruled a suicide and that was that. But, there is speculation that he was murdered. Like William Desmond Taylor before him, Paul Bern had a secret life that Hollywood knew little about. A woman, Dorothy Millette had lived with Bern as man and wife before his Hollywood glory days. Could Dorothy have reappeared in Bern's life and pulled the trigger on her former lover/common law spouse before ending her own life mere days later?
- 14 September, Berlin: Release of Der trämende Mund (Dreaming Lips), directed by Paul Czinner and Lee Garmes, based on French author Henry Bernstein's play, with Elisabeth Bergner and Rudolph Forster. In the French version (Mélo), directed solely by Czinner, the roles are played by Gaby Morlay and Pierre Blanchar.
- 15 September, Berlin: Fritz Lang has started filming The Testament of Dr. Mabuse in UFA's studios in Neubabelsberg.
 - 18 September, Hollywood: Twenty-four-year-old actress Peg Entwhistle, depressed from being dropped by RKO and after a night of drinking, jumped to her death from the top of the 50-foot high "H" of the "HOLLYWOODLAND" sign. Shortly after her death a letter from the Beverly Hills Playhouse arrived at her uncle's home for her. They wanted her to star in their next production which, ironically, was about a young girl who commits suicide.
- 11 October, Hollywood:
 Having delivered a powerful performance earlier this year as the Capone-like gangster in Howard Hawks' much talked about Scarface, Paul Muni has scored another triumph for Warner Bros. in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. This time, however, he is not dishing out the violence but finds himself on the receiving end as a war veteran who is framed for a crime he didn't commit. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy and based on Robert E. Burns' autobiographical account of his own experiences in prison, the film charts the downward spiral described by Muni as he is betrayed by the justice system. Denied promised parole, he escapes to live out his life as a broken and desperate fugitive. This harrowing tale is not one with obvious box-office potential, but audiences have given overwhealming support to LeRoy's searing indictment of the brutal conditions of prison farms in the Deep South, thereby validating Warners' policy of making "socially conscious" films. Muni is the child of Austrian immigrant actors and played in Yiddish stock for many years, only essaying a role in English in 1926. In 1929 he made his film debut for Fox in The Valiant, and in the same year proved that he was a master of makeup in Seven Faces, in which he carried seven parts, including Napoléon and Don Juan. Fox let him go and it was only after a hit on Broadway, Counselor-at-Law, that Hawks cast him as Scarface. Muni's new contract with Warners is unique, giving him the right to approve his material.
- 22 October, Hollywood:
 Rising MGM star Clark Gable's career has been given a big boost by Red Dust, a robust romance set in the Far East, in which he plays a rubber planter dallying with two dames, floozie Jean Harlow and upper-class vamp Mary Astor. It's a role handmade for Gable's relaxed, earthy masculinity and cements 12 months of steady progress in which he has risen from the ranks to become one of the studio's hottest properties. Gable had a variety of jobs, including those of extra and stage actor, before Lionel Barrymore got him a screen test at MGM. The test was a flop, but after he attracted attention in his debut film, The Painted Desert, MGM offered Gable a contract and then rushed him through no fewer than nine more films in 1931, in which he benefited from playing opposite some of the strongest leading ladies in Hollywood, among them Greta Garbo (Susan Lenox -- Her Fall and Rise), Norma Shearer (A Free Soul), Barbara Stanwyck (Night Nurse) and Joan Crawford (Dance, Fools, Dance, Possessed and Laughing Sinners).
- 2 November, Hollywood: The stage actress Katharine Hepburn is making her screen debut in George Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement, alongside John Barrymore and Billie Burke.
- 8 November, Los Angeles: Release of Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise, starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall.
- 10 November, New York: Mervyn LeRoy's film, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, with Paul Muni and Glenda Farrell, has received enthusiastic press. The plot is about the inhuman treatment of a condemned but innocent man.
- 11 November, Paris: Release of Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning) by Jean Renoir, produced and interpreted by Michel Simon, adapted from the play by René Fauchois.
- 3 December, Moscow: Vsevolod Pudovkin's latest film, A Simple Case, is a disappointment. The script by Alexander Rjechevski is lyrcal but lacks structure.
- 3 December, Budapest: Release of the Franco-Hungarian co-production, Tavaski Zapor (Spring Shower), starring Annabella, in the absence of its director Paul Fejos, who had had to leave the country for political reasons.
- 7 December, Paris: The release of Poil-de-carotte (Redhead), a film by Julien Duvivier, based on the book by Jules Renard, with Harry Baur and 11-year-old Robert Lynen.
- 8 December, Paris:
 A new movie theater, the Rex, has opened on the boulevard Poissonnière. Its tasteful decor and luxurious fittings make it an essential port of call for all movie lovers.
- 20 December, London: The young actress Vivian Mary Hartley, who is only 19 (and who will later change her stage name to Vivien Leigh), and the lawyer Herbert Leigh Holman were married in Saint James church.
- 31 December, Berlin: Under Alfred Hugenberg's management, the UFA trust has recovered from its financial crisis and now employs 5,000 people.
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3 February - Canton, OH, Peggy Ann Garner