- Prague, 1 January: Gustav Machaty, who has decided to leave the country, has held a preview of his film Nocturne. Shooting was done in Austria with photography by Jan Stallich.
- Paris, 4 January: Premiere of Jean Renoir's new film Madame Bovary at the Ciné-Opéra. The film stars Valentine Tessier and the director's brother, Pierre Renoir.
- Berlin, 16 January: Reichsminister Josef Goebbels has instituted an official prize, the Film of the Nation, for works of merit, with propaganda as the obvious theme. He quoted the film The Battleship Potemkin as an example.
 - Paris, 3 February:
 The great classics of French literature are lending inspiration to more film directors than ever before. Just a month after the release at the Ciné-Opéra of Jean Renoir's Madame Bovary, a new version of Les Misérables, directed by Raymond Bernard, was sown at a gala evening at the Cinéma Marignan. Renoir's film brings to mind much of the beauty of his father's paintings while benefiting from excellent performances by Valentine Tessier in the title role and Pierre Renoir, the director's brother, as her husband. This has not prevented the public from displaying their indifference toward the film, though, admittedly, Madame Bovary was shown by the distributors in a cut and distorted version. Presented in a single evening, the three episodes of Les Misérables were more fortunate. The public appreciated it, and the critics hailed the film and its director, whom they praised for turning Victor Hugo's immense novel into a workable and lucid scenario. With his huge talent and an imposing physique, Harry Bauer makes an unforgettable Jean Valjean, heading an equally remarkable cast that includes Charles Vanel and Orane Demazis.
- London, 10 February: Cary Grant has married the actress Virginia Cherrill at Caxton Hall.
- Berlin, 16 February: Promulgation of the cinema law prepared by Goebbels' staff. The law gives the government the power to intervene in all phases of film production and absolute control over the choice of subject matter, writers and directors.
- Hollywood, 22 February:
 A few months after the triumph of Lady for a Day, Frank Capra has continued to win over the pubic with It Happened One Night. His new film for Columbia is a ravishing comedy about a capricious heiress and a sensationalist reporter who start on a cross-country journey by squabbling and end by falling head-over-heels in love with one another. She is on the run after her marriage to a fortune hunter was annulled by her father. She loses her money on a bus trip to New York, and he agrees to help her in return for an exclusive story. During the trip, the couple are forced to hitchhike, sleep in a haystack, and share a motel room while pretending to be husband and wife. Based on a story by Samuel Hopkins Adams called Night Bus, the film almost didn't happen. Every star under contract -- Robert Montgomery for the reporter, and Margaret Sullavan, Miriam Hopkins, Myrna Loy, Constance Bennett for the heiress -- turned down the screenplay. Finally, MGM lent Columbia Clark Gable in exchange for Frank Capra directing a picture for them. Claudette Colbert accepted the part on condition that the shooting last no more than four weeks, and that her salary be doubled. Capra accepted the challenge, and concluded the film in record time. His rapid, hard-edged direction and the light, engaging playing of the two leads have provided the Depression-weary American public with just the sort of tonic they need.
- Paris, 26 February: The French version of Liebelei, made by Max Ophüls with Magda Schneider, has been released here under the title Une Histoire d'amour (A Love Story).
- Berlin, 11 March:
 Josef Goebbels does not lack the power to impose a ban on films of which the Nazi Party disapproves. Sometimes the methods he employs are insidious. It would have been clumsy to prevent outright the German release of the first film made in England by director Paul Czinner, a Jew who left the country with his actress wife, Elisabeth Bergner, when the Nazis came to power last year. Catherine the Great, starring Bergner and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., could not just be ignored. Goebbels' tactic has been to let the Nazi press fulminate against a foreign film, "produced by and starring Jews," supported by the menacing presence of storm troopers at each showing. Thus, the film has been withdrawn as a threat to public order.
- London, 30 April: Robert Flaherty was invited to make The Man of Aran by John Grierson, the leader of the English documentary school. The film was released a couple of weeks ago and is proving very successful.
- Los Angeles, 3 May: Release of Twentieth Century, based on the play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and directed by Howard Hawks. John Barrymore and Carole Lombard are the stars.
- Paris, 15 May: The first film directed by Fritz Lang since he left Germany has been released today. Liliom was adpated from the play by Ferenc Molnar and stars Madeleine Ozeray and Charles Boyer.
- Switzerland, 29 May: Filming has started in St. Moritz on The Man Who Knew Too Much, the English director Alfred Hitchcock's latest film, which stars Peter Lorre, Leslie Banks and Edna Best.
- New York, 9 June: Release of W. S. Van Dyke's new film The Thin Man, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as the amateur detectives Nick and Nora Charles.
- Los Angeles, 13 June: A new code has been introduced to set down production guidelines in regards to censorship and morality. Movie theater owners are authorized to refuse all films produced prior to the code which they consider to be in contravention of it.
- Los Angeles, 12 July: The president of the MPPDA, William H. Hays, has announced that a fine of $25,000 will be the penalty for any changes made to screenplays once they have been passed by the Commission.
- Berlin, 22 July: The censors have banned Nana, filmed by the French director Jean Renoir from the novel by Zola. The film stars Cathering Hessling in the title role, with the Germans Werner Krauss and Valeska Gert also cast. Jewish actress Gert had to emigrate to America last year.
- Hollywood, 24 July: Release of Cecil B. De Mille's work Cleopatra, with Claudette Colbert as the legendary beauty, Warren William and Henry Wilcoxon.
- Shanghai, 31 July: The film now showing at the Jingcheng cinema, Yu Guang Qa (The Song of the Fisherman), written and directed by Cal Chusheng, has been an instant success. The exquisitely beautiful song of the title is on it way to becoming one of the most popular melodies in China.
- Los Angeles, 1 August:
 Financier and longtime Technicolor associate Jock Whitney decides to jump into the movie producer business and make the first live action feature 3-strip Technicolor film. Creating Pioneer Pictures, he carefully dips a toe in the water by first producing a two-reel short subject, La Cucaracha, a musical comedy. The budget of $50,000 is more than triple that of a black-and-white film of similar length. The film, released through RKO, is successful and receives favorable reviews for the use of the new palette. Technicolor live action films see their birth in a film named "Cockroach". Fortunately it was not an omen. -- from the Widescreen Museum.
- Venice, 1 August: The Second Venice Film Festival has ended on a note of triumph for Katharine Hepburn, winner of the best acress award for her performance as Jo in Little Women, directed by George Cukor. Hepburn is riding the crest of a wave at the moment, having won the Best Actress Oscar® last March for Morning Glory, in which she plays a stagestruck girl who becomes a star. Other winners at this year's Festival include Wallace Beery for best actor in Viva Villa!, directed by Jack Conway.
 - Nuremberg, 4 September:
 Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) is the title given by the Führer to a documentary film to be made on the Nazi Party's Nuremberg Rally, and the preparations for it. It will be directed by Leni Riefenstahl, born Berta Helene Amalie Riefenstahl in Berlin. Riefenstahl's showbiz experience began with "an experiment". She wanted to know what it felt like to dance on the stage. Success as a dancer gave way to film acting when she attracted the attention of film director Arnold Fanck, subsequently starring in some of Fanck's "mountaineering" pictures. With Fanck as her mentor, Riefenstahl began directing films. She has been given a contract by UFA and considerable means to carry out her mission. She will direct a team of 120 people, of which there will be 32 technicians with 32 cameras. To be able to shoot all aspects of the event, 130,000 metres of film will be at her disposal. With Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl has become the Egeria of the Nazi Party.
 - Hollywood, 10 September: Busby Berkeley, the fantastic dance director, has continued to astonish with the routines in his latest film, Dames, which opened here last week. In the title number, hundreds of chorus girls in white blouses and black tights are seen waking, bathing, dressing and hurrying to the theater where they become part of a series of optical mazes. It ends with the girls reclining on different levels of a scaffold structure, but as the camera pulls back, they become tiny figures, and with an imperceptible cut, Dick Powell's head suddenly bursts through the picture in close-up. Almost as good is the "I Only Have Eyes for You" number, in which a multitude of girls all have Ruby Keeler's face until they come together to form one huge portrait.
- London, 10 September:
 Jessie Matthews, Britain's favorite singing star, has scored her biggest film hit with Evergreen, a charming piece of froth about an Edwardian music hall star blackmailed into retirement and the daughter who steps into her shoes to win stardom. Matthews' own progress from chorus girl to toast of London has taken some 10 years. Her first successful foray into films came in 1931 with Out of the Blue, and her current contract with Michael Balcon, head of British Gaumont, gives her script and director approval.
 - Hollywood, 14 September: Marlene Dietrich's sixth collaboration with Josef von Sternberg has produced The Scarlet Empress, in which the star portrays the nymphomaniac Catherine the Great, stalking through an extravagantly designed and lit fantasy of 18th-century Russia. Dietrich, never more sensually photographed than this, achieves the transition from gauche childhood to disillusioned womanhood with extraordinary understanding, while cameraman Bert Glennon's caressing close-ups, in candle-light and veils, are truly sumptuous. Even the grotesque gargoyles, with which art director Hans Dreier has decorated the rococo sets, melt into the background as Sternberg's lovely leading lady makes her royal and glamorous progress.
- Cairo, 15 September: The cinematographic branch of the Misr Bank, which at the moment is already involved in film production, is now building new studios.
- Moscow, 15 September: The Moskino-Kombinat studio has released Mikhail Romm's first feature, Pyshka, a silent film based on Maupassant's Boule-de-suif.
- Marseilles, 28 September:
 The inhabitants of this Mediterranean port doubtless deserve the gift that a child of the area has offered them: Marcel Pagnol has just given the world premiere in Marseilles of his new film, Angèle, which he shot in the region. It was shown in a tinted color version, blue for the night scenes, pink for the day shots, and multicolored for the dramatic scenes. By installing his troupe on a farm, and by using direct sound, Pagnol has created a realistic Provençal background and written a beautifully crafted scenario that transcends the slightly melodramatic plot. Based on a short novel by Jean Giono, the film is admirably interpreted by Orane Demazis -- in the role of the young, naïve peasant girl, secuded and abandoned, who goes to Marseilles, where she has a child and becomes a prostitute -- and by Fernandel who, in portraying the simple-minded farm hand Saturnin, emerges as a great tragi-comic actor.
- Los Angeles, 2 October: Release of Our Daily Bread, by King Vidor, which tells of the vicissitudes of an agricultural cooperative during the Great Depression.
- Moscow, 5 October: German thespian Erwin Piscator has made his first film The Revolt of the Fishermen in the Soviet Union.
 - Paris, 5 October: Jean Vigo has died of septicemia at the age of 29. His illness disrupted the making of his last film, L'Atalante, the shooting of which took place last winter on location in appalling weather conditions. Vigo's health had already deteriorated to such a point that Louis Chavance had to undertake the editing alone. Confined to bed, the director could not see his finished film, although it was released a few weeks ago at the Colisée. At least Vigo was spared the pain of disappointment at the the result, because numerous cuts were imposed on it by Gaumont-FFA. The distributors were responding to the negative reaction the film received when it was shown to exhibitors last April. Gaumont then added a popular song by Bixio, sung by Lys Gauty, to the musical score by Maurice Jaubert, and changed the title from L'Atalante to the name of the song, Le Chaland qui passe. These changes did not make for a warmer welcome by the public and critics, and the movie soon disappeared from view. The fate of the director and the film has given a slightly bitter edge to Vigo's recent utterance: "I am killing myself with L'Atalante." It's a pity, because the simple love story of a young barge captain (Jean Dasté), who takes his bride (Dita Parlo) to live aboard his boat, has many magical moments, such as the young man searching for his sweetheart under water. Michel Simon is superb as the mate telling fantastic stories of his travels. Perhaps, one day, the film will be shown in its original form, thus respecting the wishes of the late Jean Vigo.
- Hollywood, 13 October: Ernst Lubitsch has released his screen adaptation of the famous operetta The Merry Widow, by Franz Lehar, with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.
- Prague, 26 October: Release of Hej Rup!, a satirical film by Martin Fric that takes a long and bitter look at the problems caused by unemployment.
- Moscow, 7 November: Lenfilm has released Chapayev by Sergei and Georgi Vasiliev, a patriotic epic set during the civil war.
- Tokyo, 23 November: Premiere of Yasujiro Ozu's Ukigusa Monogatari (A Story of Floating Weeds). The film deals with the difficult relationship between a father and son in a traveling troupe.
- Los Angeles, 28 November: Members of the board of directors of Paramount-Publix (undergoing bankruptcy) have resigned, and a new Board has been elected. The company has submitted its recovery plan to the courts.
- Hollywood, 30 November:
 Comedy's great curmudgeon, W. C. Fields, rejoins battle with his infant sparring partner Baby LeRoy in Paramount's hilarious It's a Gift, a new production directed by Norman Z. McLeod. Fields is Harold Bissonette (pronounced "Bisson-nay"), a harassed husband and storekeeper whose premises are wrecked thanks to the flailing shite stick of a grumpy blind and deaf customer, before being inundated by a flood of molasses released by Baby LeRoy. "Spreadingest stuff I ever saw," ruminates Fields sadly, before fixing a notice on the front door that reads: "Closed on Account of Molasses."
 - London, 16 December: The last three years have seen the expansion of a British documentary movement, whose presiding genius has been John Grierson, head of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit from 1928 and currently head of the GPO Film Unit. One of his recruits at the E.M.B., Basil Wright, taken on as an editor in 1929 before graduating to directing in 1931, has now written, directed and photographed a notable documentary called Song of Ceylon. In four parts, "The Buddha," "The Virgin Island," "The Voices of Commerce" and "The Apparel of God," it is sensuous and pictorially elegant.
- Paris, 19 December: Julien Duvivier's Maria Chapdelaine, with Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud, has been awarded the major French film prize.
- Moscow, 25 December:
 The long sojourn of Sergei Eisenstein in America between 1930 and 1932 did bear some fruit indirectly. His former assistant director, scenarist and actor, Grigori Alexandrov, who had been with him in the US has just made Jolly Fellows, a Hollywood-style musical comedy. Alexandrov has perfectly assimilated the rules of the genre, while adapting it to the country of Socialism. It tells of a shepherd, who takes up a career in jazz, finally giving a concert at the Bolshoi. Leonid Outessov, a singer from Odessa, plays the shepherd, and the ravishing Lyubov Orlova is his sweetheart.
- Los Angeles, 28 December: Release of Here Is My Heart, directed by Frank Tuttle, starring Kitty Carlisle, Roland Young, and Bing Crosby as a rich and famous singer who disguises himself as a waiter so he can be near the woman he loves, a European princess.
- Hollywood, 28 December: Charles Chaplin has shot several scenes with dialogue between himself and Paulette Goddard for Modern Times, a film he has been working on since 1933. However, none of these sequences have been retained.
- New York 31 December: US release of Victor Saville's Evergreen, starring Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Betty Balfour and Barry MacKay.
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26 March - New York City, 