- New York, 10 January: The Hearst press has been forbidden to publish any mention of the film Citizen Kane or any other RKO work. Proprietor William Randolph Hearst considers the film defamatory and has doubled his threats of a court case.
- Hollywood, 15 January: Jean Renoir, who has signed a year's contract with 20th Century-Fox, has this comment to make about the company's vice president, Darryl F. Zanuck: "He is a producer who even goes so far as to choose the color of his actor's ties."
- New York, 31 January: Release of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, by Alfred Hitchcock. Carole Lombard, the star of the film, had asked to work with Hitchcock, who oblighed with a piece that is not a thriller.
- Paris, 14 February: Release of the German propaganda film Jew Süss, by Veit Harlan, which has met with very positiive reaction.
- Hollywood, 21 February: Rita Hayworth has a starring role for the first time in Raoul Walsh's newly released saucy comedy, The Strawberry Blonde, with Olivia De Havilland and James Cagney.
- Hollywood, 27 February: At the Academy Awards ceremony here last night, Ginger Rogers was named Best Actress for Kitty Foyle. The dramatic role was a departure for a star usually associated with the tapping feet of Fred Astaire. Sir Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca received an impressive 11 nominations and 2 awards, including Best Picture.
- Washington, 8 March: The government has made public the salaries earned by heads of well-known companies. Louis B. Mayer (MGM) is the highest paid executive in the country with an annual salary of approximately $700,000.
- London, 10 March:
 A monster eye on the prow of a ship glides into view during the opening moments of Alexander Korda's new The Thief of Bagdad, a spellbinding Arabian Nights fantasy, full of stunning special effects, in which Sabu does battle with Conrad Veidt's evil Grand Vizier, and Rex Ingram towers over the rest of the cast as a mischievous outsize genie. Three directors, Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell and Tim Whelan, had a hand in the production, which began in England and was finally completed in Hollywood. The screenplay is by Lajos Biro, and the stunning Technicolor photography has been masterminded by the brilliant French cameraman Georges Périnal.
- Moscow, 15 March: Sergei Eisenstein has been awarded the Stalin prize for his historical epic Alexander Nevsky.
 - Los Angeles, 25 March: The supremely professional Barbara Stanwyck stars in what promises to be one of the year's sparkiest comedies, written and directed by Preston Sturges, who found his feet last year with The Great McGinty. Stanwyck is the lady of the title, a ruthless cardsharp who preys on the smart set with her father Charles Coburn. Working with the trans-Atlantic luxury liner beat, she sets her sights on tangle-footed brewery heir Henry Fonda, whose only passion is rare snakes, until he encounters Stanwyck over a marked deck of cards. Stanwyck is superb, alternately pugnacious and melting, while Fonda's bashful deliberation provides her with the perfect comic foil.
- Hollywood, 11 April:
 Following the enormous success of last year's Road to Singapore, Paramount decided to send the same team of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour on another exotic journey, this time on the Road to Zanzibar. This romp is even funnier than the previous film, and looks like it will be an even bigger hit. If so, the studio might consider sending the trio on more comic trips.
 - New York, 1 May: The first film directed by Orson Welles, Citizen Kane, has at last opened in New York. Its release was planned for 14 February, but it was postponed because of the press campaign that was organized by the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. It was Hearst, among others, who had inspired the scriptwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz to create the megalomaniac character. RKO, who produced the picture, refused to give in to the pressure and organized various private screenings before showing it to the press on 9 April. This incurred the wrath of Hollywood's unofficial arbiters of taste, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the latter being a Hearst employee. For his first incursion into cinema, Welles, only 25, has shown a perfect mastery of the medium. This brilliant actor and director of the Mercury Theater had already acquired notoriety from his radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds aired on 30 October 1938. It was so realistic that listeners in their thousands believed an invasion from Mars had taken place, and fled the cities. Because of his reputation, Welles was offered a contract by RKO Radio studios president George Shaefer. The contract tied him to make two films, both of which he would produce, direct, write and appear in for a fee of over $100,000 per picture. Citizen Kane was not, however, the multi-talented Welles' first choice. He proposed a version of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, then Nicholas Blake's The Smiler with the Knife, before he was attracted to the story of a press baron, seeing in it a terrific role for himself. The official shooting began on 29 June and finished on 23 October 1940. For all of Welles' fears of a law suit from Hearst, Citizen Kane opened spectacularly at the Palace Theater today, with crowds lining the streets. Some audiences might be confused by a film that seems to break all the rules. Charles Foster Kane is seen from many viewpoints, which goes against chronological narrative conventions. Of the many memorable sequences is one where we see the growing gulf between the tycoon and his wife through a series of vignettes in which the couple move further and further away from each other at the breakfast table. Cameraman Gregg Toland's use of wide-angle and deep focus lenses, the innovative deployment of sound, narration and overlapping dialogue, Bernard Herrmann's music, all in pursuit of the meaning of the word "Rosebud," make this one of the most audacious jigsaw puzzles of a film ever produced. It is a remarkable debut by the "Boy Wonder."
- Los Angeles, 13 June: The American Federation of Labor (AFL) has called for a boycott of Disney productions in support of workers at Disney, who have been battling in vain for higher wages and the recognition of their union.
- Hollywood, 14 June: Scriptwriter John Huston has started filming The Maltese Falcon. It is his first project as a director.
- Berlin, 24 June: A circular handed down from the Ministry of Propaganda and Information has ordered the press to "immediately cease all debate on American films" and goes on to say that "the German public is only interested in German films."
- Paris, 30 June: Abel Gance, who has been accused of being Jewish, is required by the Vichy Government to prove his "Aryan" origins to the head of the cinema industry.
- Hollywood, 1 August: Orson Welles is working on a scenario for Journey Into Fear, based on the novel by Eric Ambler. His friend, the actor Joseph Cotton, is involved with the project.
- New York, 8 August:
 The privileged audience at the premiere of William Wyler's new film, The Little Foxes, unanimously hailed the performance of Bette Davis. As in Lillian Hellman's original play, the action takes place at the beginning of the century in Louisiana. Davis plays the odious Regina Giddens, who would allow her banker hustand to die so that she can inherit his fortune. An excellent role for an actress who has come out on top in a poll organized by the Motion Picture Herald. Yet The Little Foxes marks a break between the star and the director. Wyler and Davis were in disagreement over her interpretation of the role, which Wyler thought lacked subtlety.
- Hollywood, August: As his latest contribution to the British war effort, Alfred Hitchcock has come up with an idea for a new film about fifth columnists sabotaging American defense plans.
- Hollywood, 31 August: Ava Gardner, a young beauty who was spotted in a photograph, has signed a seven-year contract with MGM. She thus joins other budding starlets as a member of the coveted MGM "seraglio."
 - Hollywood, 2 September: In the title role of Howard Hawks' new film, Sergeant York, Gary Cooper delivers a magnificent performance. He gradually changes from a simple farmer into a hero, having to adapt his beliefs to the circumstances of the Great War. The film is an ideal frame for the star's underplaying, and he exudes the goodness and piety of the real-life man on whom York is based.
- Berlin, 5 September: After six years of exile in France, G. W. Pabst has at last returned to Germany in response to Goebbels' insistent demands. His is making Komödianten (The Comedians), with Henny Porten and Hilde Krahl.
- Washington, 21 September: Harry M. Warner, the president of Warner Bros., has given evidence to the Commission of Inquiry about "cinematographic propaganda." He is having to defend his productions against accusations of "militarism and incitement to war."
- London, 29 September:
 Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh make a handsome couple in Alexander Korda's Lady Hamilton, released in American as That Hamilton Woman. Produced and directed by Korda in Hollywood for United Artists, the picture stars the glamorous husband-and-wife team as Admiral Lord Nelson and his famous flamboyant mistress, Miss Emma Hamilton. Their romance, set against the background of the Napoleonic Wars, is cut short by Nelson's death in 1805 at the Battle of Trafalgar. The parallel between Napoleon and Hitler has clearly delighted the British Prime Minister Winson Churchill, who says Lady Hamilton is his favorite film.
- Hollywood, 30 September: Walt Disney has given the press a preview of his latest cartoon feature, Dumbo, about a flying elephant.
- Rome, 4 October: Release of Roberto Rossellini's first full-length feature film entitled La Nave bianco (The White Ship). Originally planned as a documentary with a non-professional cast, it then developed into a dramatic and uncompromising study of war at sea.
- Soviet Union, 14 October: Eisenstein and his personnel have been transferred to Alma-Alta in Kazakhstan because of the German army's advance into the Motherland.
 - New York, 18 October: John Huston, the son of the actor Walter Huston, has made a magnificent debut as a film director with The Maltese Falcon. Huston, who has been a screenwriter at Universal and Warner Bros., chose to make a third adaptation of the crime novel. Providing a strong cast and a sharp script, he has rendered Dashiell Hammett's prose style into film terms. The title refers to a precious statuette that various crooks and the private eye, Sam Spade, want to get hold of. For the role of the detective, Huston originally wanted to cast George Raft, but when the star refused, the director got the idea of using Humphrey Bogart, an actor who has specialized in portraying gangsters but rarely has had a leading role. This decision has contributed greatly to the film's success. By the force of his talent, Bogart has made Sam Spade into a hard-boiled man without illusions.
- Los Angeles, 28 October: Release of Jean Renoir's first American film Swamp Water, starring Walter Brennan, Anne Baxter and Dana Andrews.
- New York, 28 October:
 20th Century-Fox created a little bit of Wales in California when they made the screen version of Richard Llewellyn's best-selling novel, How Green Was My Valley, from Philip Dunne's evocative script adaptation. The studio built a Welsh mining village in the hills north of Los Angeles, and filled it with as many Welsh singers as it could find on the West Coast. The picture tells the story of the Morgan family, headed by stern paterfamilias Donald Crisp (a Scot) and kindly Sarah Allgood (of Irish extraction). Their youngest son, played by English war evacuee Roddy McDowall, narrates the story of this mining family in flashback. American-Irish director John Ford bathes the novel's turn-of-the-century world in a richly rhapsodic glow, photographed by Arthur C. Miller, which Welsh miners in the harsh conditions of today might find a little hard to recognize. However, protests from critics on the other side of the Atlantic have been muffled by the sound of ringing cash registers as the box-office returns pay testimony to Ford's consummate skill as a storyteller.
 - Hollywood, 16 November: Alfred Hitchcock's latest movie, Suspicion, has just opened. A well-crafted, beautifully acted suspense drama, set in England and based on Before the Fact, a successful novel by author Frances Iles in the tradition of Rebecca, the film reunites Hitchcock with Joan Fontaine, who won an Oscar for her performance in the earlier film. Since the completion of Rebecca early in 1940, the director has found himself in the somewhat strange position of being under contract to a producer, David O. Selznick, who has in fact given up producing films. As a result, Hitchcock has been "loaned out" to other producers and studios for a variety of projects, all carefully selected for him. He has apparently also been able to function more or less as a producer-director who has a large degree of creative freedom, however with Suspicion, he had to cope with meddling studio executives for the first time. This particular project, sophisticated and ambiguous, casts the plausible, handsome and very charming Cary Grant as Fontaine's husband who may, or may not, be planning to murder her. RKO attempted to take the film away from Hitch and re-cut it to excise all hints of such intention -- a step that would have eliminated the superbly developed suspense and tension of the piece. Fortunately, the picture has been released in its maker's version and looks likely to be a big success. Hitchcock has already moved on to his next film, for yet another studio, Universal. An anti-Nazi spy thriller called Saboteur and starring Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, it is part of his personal contribution to the war effort and is based on his own story idea.
- Tokyo, 1 December: Kenji Mizoguchi, who has been working for the Shochiku company since the bankruptcy of Nikkatsu, has returned to historical films (known as sabre-films or jidai-geki) with The Loyal 47 Ronin - Part I.
- Hollywood, 12 December: Filmmaker Frank Capra has announced his intention to join the Cinema Services section of the armed forces. His is hoping to use his knowledge to further democracy.
- Hollywood, 24 December:
 King's Row, based on the bestseller by Henry Bellamann, takes a look at life in small-town America and delivers a community touched by murder, madness and sadism. Directed by Sam Wood, photographed by James Wong Howe, designed by William Cameron Menzies, with a score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, King's Row could not fail to be entertainment of the highest quality. The acting in this enthralling 127-minute long melodrama also comes up to scratch, particularly in the performances of Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan, who have confounded those cynics who had assumed they would be too lightweight for their respective roles.
- New York, 26 December: Release of The Shanghai Gesture, by Josef von Sternberg, which stars Gene Tierney, Victor Mature, Walter Huston and Ona Munson. This is Sternberg's first major film since his separation from Marlene Dietrich.
- China, 28 December: The Wan Brothers have released Tie shan gong zhu (The Iron Fan), the first full-length Chinese cartoon. The film's success is in part due to its resolutely anti-Japanese tone.
 - New York, 31 December: Having successfully gotten Garbo to laugh in last year's Ninotchka, MGM has over-extended itself with Two-Faced Woman, whose selling line is "Garbo is Twins!" Appearing in her second comedy vehicle, directed by George Cukor, Garbo plays a woman who marries New York businessman Melvyn Douglas and then turns vamp to thwart his old flame, Constance Bennett, by seducing him for a second time in the guise of her predatory sister. But the comedy never catches fire, and the film has been given a mauling by the critics. Increasingly disillusioned with filmmaking and suspicious that Two-Faced Woman was part of an MGM plot to "kill her off," Garbo has therefore chosen this moment to announce her retirement from the screen. After 27 films she has no wish to disappoint her admirers by growing old on the screen. For its part, the studio that brought her to Hollywood in 1925 is happy to bid her goodbye. In recent years Garbo has been more popular in Europe than in America, but most of the overseas market is now closed to the Hollywood majors.
- Paris, 31 December: Six statutes have been enacted today by the Propaganda Division, the regulating body for the cinematographic profession. They include the exclusion of Jews, a measure Vichy has applied with alacrity. Last September, German censorship came into force over film distribution in the occupied zone. The German High Command alone is empowered to authorize films being made in French studios. With the creation of Continental, a new subsidiary of UFA, the occupying powers have a total grip on French cinema.
- Hollywood, 31 December: Producer Hal B. Wallis has sent a memo to all departments at Warner Bros. regarding the recently acquired story "Everybody Comes to Rick's." The title has been changed to Casablanca.
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4 January - 
3 October - Los Angeles County, CA, 
5 May - Hollywood,