- London, 27 January:
 David Lean has produced a masterful screen version of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, an object lesson in compression, definition and narrative drive. The accomplished cast brings Dickens' characters to vibrant life: Finlay Currie as the convict Magwitch, who erupts from the clay of a remote graveyard like a force of Nature; John Mills as a delightful Pip; Alec Guinness, making his screen debut as the whimsical Herbert Pocket; and Martha Hunt's Miss Havisham, brooding over the cobweb-clogged remains of her wedding feast. The picture's success has convinced British film mogul J. Arthur Rank that he can conquer the American market.
- Hollywood, 7 March: With the war over, searchlights were illuminated once again outside of Grauman's Chinese Theater where Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend came out tops at the Oscar® ceremony. It won Best Picture, Best Actor (Ray Milland), Best Director and Best Screenplay (Charles Brackett and Wilder). Yet, The Lost Weekend was very nearly a lost film. When it was first previewed, audiences reacted negatively to the realistic and down-beat story of an alcoholic, and the film's release was postponed. However, after some private screenings, its image improved, and it became one of the year's top money-spinners. The Best Actress award went to Joan Crawford for her no-holds-barred performance in Mildred Pierce. It couldn't have happened at a better time for the 41-year-old star, who had come to be regarded as "box-office poison."
- Hollywood, 23 April: Shirley Temple, who won an Academy Award® when she was only six, gives a party for her 18th birthday. As a symbolic gesture to the passing of her famous childhood, she burned a red school tunic in front of the 100 guests.
- Hollywood, 2 May:
 In 1939 the French called it The Last Bend, with stars Fernand Gravey and Corinne Luchaire; in 1942, Visconti unleashed the Italian neo-realist movement with it, under the apt title Ossessione, with Massimo Girotti and Clara Calamai. Now, with Tay Garnett at the helm, it's Hollywood's turn to film James M. Cain's tale of lust, murder and retribution. Lana Turner and John Garfield are the stars of The Postman Always Rings Twice, and, with respect to the European versions, they make the most sizzling pair to date as the unhappy wife and her lover, who plot to kill her boorish husband. Certainly a departure for MGM, the studio of family entertainment.
 - Rome, 10 May: Although Shoeshine, Vittorio De Sica's latest film, is a powerful and touching semi-documentary of poverty in postwar Italy, Italian audiences have preferred to flock to the more frivolous American offerings. Director De Sica and his scenarist Cesare Zavattini already showed their concern for children suffering from the separation of parents in I bambini ci guardano (The Children Are Watching Us) three years ago. With Shoeshine the tone has become more scathing and accusatory, yet it remains humane. Since the war, bands of children have been forced to live in the streets, many of them becoming shoe-shine boys to survive. De Sica concentrates on two in particular, Giuseppe and Pasquale, who dream of buying a horse with the little extra money they make out of dealing the black market goods, but they end up in reform school instead. They escape, but in a fit of bitter rage, Pasquale kills his friend. The situation, according to the film, is the result of fascism and not the fault of the children. The astonishingly naturalistic performances by the young non-actors, and the shooting in real locations, create an unforgettable impression. It is to be hoped that eventually Italian audiences will want to see films that reflect their own society.
- France, 8 July: Servicemen on leave are no longer entitled to free movie tickets.
- Paris, 13 July: The professional weekly La Cinématographie française devotes an article to the French cinema's rising stars: Simone Signoret, Gérard Philipe, Martine Carol, Yves Montand and Daniel Gélin.
- Hollywood, 16 July: Fox has signed the 20-year-old photographic model Norma Jean Baker at a salary of $75/week. She will now be known professionally as Marilyn Monroe.
- New York, 22 July:
 In RKO's Notorious, a scintillating espionage thriller with a South American setting, Alfred Hitchcock drives a coach and horses through the Production Code, maneuvering Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman through the longest embrace in screen history in a small masterpiece of impish eroticism. Bergman plays the daughter of a convicted spy manipulated by US intelligence into marrying mother-fixated Nazi villain Claude Rains. Most of the manipulating is done by Grant at his most charmingly calculating. Rains is also superb as the sympthetic heavy, and Hitchcock delivers another directing tour de force at one of the film's most suspensful moments: with a little help from camerman Ted Tetzlaff, Hitchcock pulls off an extraordinary crane shot that begins at the top of a lengthy staircase and then swoops down to the floor below, where a party is in progress, finally to focus in close-up on a key clutched in the hand of Bergman. Evidently, Tetzlaff ribbed Hitchcock on the set with the playful remark, "Getting a bit technical, aren't you, Pop?"
 - Hollywood, 24 July: Written by Robert Rossen and directed by Lewis Milestone, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is one of the most uncompromisingly nasty melodramas to hit the screen. Barbara Stanwyck is twice the viper of Double Indemnity, well-matched by Van Heflin as a diabolical counterpart. Playing the supporting role of the weakling husband, cleft-chinned newcomer Kirk Douglas has to fight to be noticed -- and noticed he is. It is quite evident that with his looks, presence and control, he will not be relegated to the background for long.
- New York, 24 July:
 Having co-starred with a horse in National Velvet in 1944, Elizabeth Taylor now shares top billing with a dog in The Courage of Lassie, directed by Fred M. Wilcox. The two of them are old friends, having first met in Lassie Come Home in 1943, although this time around a different dog has taken over the role the the Greer Garson of the canine world. Now a ripening teenager of lustrous beauty, Taylor rehabilitates a mixed-up Lassie, suffering from combat stress after war service as a killer dog.
 - Bikini, 27 July: Rita Hayworth was not pleased to see her image gracing the side of the atomic bomb tested on the Pacific atoll of Bikini. She made her feelings known at a press conference she gave yesterday. Nevertheless, last March she made her own atomic impact in Gilda, directed by Charles Vidor. As the femme fatale of the title, she played a sexy woman of the world, sheathed in shining black, her hair tumbling over one eye and teeth bared under glistening lips as she taunted Glenn Ford with "Put the Blame on Mame" (dubbed by Anita Ellis) in her husband George Macready's Buenos Aires casino. The posters for the picture proclaimed "There Never was a Woman like Gilda!", prompting British film critic C. A. Lejeune to say, "Blimey! There Never Was!" Gilda has now established Hayworth as the sleekest of sexual animals, the dream mistress of men the world over and one of Hollywood's brightest stars.
- Moscow, 16 August: One would have thought that the problems that weighed Sergei Eisenstein down before the war belonged to the past -- the re-cutting imposed on The General Line and the banning of Bezhin Meadow, the negative of which disappeared in the bombing of Moscow in 1942. The critical and public acclaim of Ivan the Terrible last year seemed to offer the director a brighter future, but the first warning of trouble came in February when Eisenstein was hospitalized with heart trouble after Part II of Ivan the Terrible was presented. The magazine Soviet Art severely criticized him for gross errors in judgment by reducing the work of a great progressive Czar to sordid palace intrigues and transforming Ivan into "a man lacking in will and in character, resembling the irresolute Hamlet, and his court into a den of the Ku Klux Klan." The release of the second part of Ivan the Terrible seems in jeopardy, and it is said that Stalin, who approved of Part I, has turned against Part II.
- New York, 22 August: Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious is being advertised as the film with the "longest screen kiss in the history of the cinema:" Two-and-a-half minutes of passion between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, broken here and there by the words necessary to satisfy the 30-second contact limit imposed by the censors.
- Hollywood, 23 August:
 Raymond Chandler has given the seal of approval to Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of his cynical shamus Philip Marlowe in Warners' The Big Sleep. Chandler believes that "Bogart can be tough without a gun." Bogey, co-starring opposite his new wife Lauren Bacall, eases his way through Howard Hawks' powerhouse thriller, which is notably stronger on atmosphere than plot, the convolutions of which defeated the combined efforts of screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman.
 - New York, 28 August: Robert Siodmak's latest film noir, The Killers, reveals a striking new star. It is the first appearance of ex-acrobat Burt Lancaster, who plays Pete Lunn, the unfortunate hunted hero known as "Swede." His imposing stature and toothy smile have gained much praise. Opposite Lancaster is the statuesque Ava Gardner, who makes an impression as a tart with a heart. Discovered four years ago by MGM, she is certain to become, like her partner, a top-ranking star.
- Venice, 1 September:
 The Allies continue to occupy the Lido at Venice, but the Mostra (the Venice Film Festival) has been reborn. The Southerner, directed by Jean Renoir in America, which sensitively describes the existence of poor farmers, was judged the best film. Other works of exceptional quality were Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die; Laurence Olivier's Henry V, an astonishing directorial debut by the great Shakespearean actor; Roberto Rossellini's Paísa; Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise); and Julien Duvivier's atmospheric Panic, all of which made the Mostra a festival of welcome homecomings and rediscoveries.
 - Cannes, 7 October: To show that the dark years of World War II are over, the French cinema invited the world's professionals to a sumptuous feast of films at the First International Film Festival at Cannes. Granted, there had been one prior, but it had been more of a meeting place than a competition. With the exception of France, the US, Great Britain and the USSR, who were participating on a large scale, many other countries were represented by short films. No matter, since the Festival was held in an atmosphere of tolerance and elegance. It has been, above all, a fraternal and apolitical window on the latest motion pictures from around the world. Financed by the French government and the town of Cannes, the Festival has no intention of rivaling that of Venice. As Italy and France are not friends, it is intended to hold the Festival biannually, one year in Cannes, the next in Venice. The Festival was inaugurated with a slip of the tongue from the new Minister of Commerce and Industry, who, obviously moved, declared "the first Festival of Agriculture" open. The jury was composed of members from the participating countries, conscious that no nation should be omitted from the awards. Two French films won top honors: The Pastoral Symphony, directed by Jean Delannoy, gained the Grand Prix, and and for which Michéle Morgan, as the blind orphan girl, won the best actress award, and Battle of the Rails, which won a special Jury prize and best director for René Clément. The Americans were also there in force, no doubt hoping for more awards than they obtained. Nevertheless, Ray Milland won the best actor prize for his remarkable performance as the alcoholic in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend. Other directors who shared various prizes were the Englishman David Lean (Great Expectations), the Italian Roberto Rossellini (Roma Città Aperta (Rome: Open City)), the Soviet Frederic Ermier (The Turning Point), the Swede Alf Sjöberg (Iris and the Lieutenant), and the Mexican Emilio Fernandez (The Pearl). George Huisman, the president of the Festival, can be proud of an illuminating week.
- New York, 10 October:
 Columbia has stuck gold with The Jolson Story, its tribute to the legendary vaudevillian who introduced talk to the movies with the immortal words, "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" The studio had to restrain the aging but irrepressible Jolson from playing himself, eventually confining him to dubbing the songs for contract player Larry Parks in his first big screen role. The movie avoids some of the more colorful aspects of Jolson's life, including his messy 1940 divorce from Ruby Keeler, but Parks makes a game stab at conveying Al's foghorning style, a one-man showbiz Blitzkrieg.
 - Berlin, 15 October: Defa, the East German-Soviet film company established some months ago in the splendid Neubabelsberg studios, has presented its first production. This world premiere of Die Mörder sind unter uns (Murderers Among Us) is of symbolic value, being the first postwar German film. It director Wolfgang Staudte, is not unknown. He was born in Saarbrücken in 1906, and started his career very young as a stage actor and then in the cinema. In 1943 he made his first feature film, Akrobat Schö-ö-ön, inspired by the life of the Rivels, a celebrated family of clowns. It was not a propaganda film, being one of the many in that epoch that were made for pure entertainment. But with Murderers Among Us, Staudte has painted a moral and physical portrait of a country emerging from disaster. The action takes place in Berlin in 1945, where Mertens, a young doctor, becomes an alcoholic while trying to forget the horrors of the war, during which Brückner, his military superior, was responsible for wiping out an entire Polish village. Though he is now determined to kill Brüchner and is only prevented from doing so by Susan, a young Jewish girl who loves him. Encouraged by her, he denounces the man to the war crime investigators. The movie, admirably directed in an expressionist manner, reveals the talent of Hildegard Knef as Susan, and faces the question of responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era.
- New York, 24 October: Ava Gardner has been granted a divorce from bandleader Artie Shaw on the grounds of mental cruelty.
- New York, 20 November:
 The major movie theme of the year has been postwar readjustment, as millions of returning servicemen learn how to deal with the stresses and strains of a civilian world that has moved on since they went away to war. In Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives this experience has been brilliantly distilled by director William Wyler, who saw combat himself while filming a memorable documentary about an 8th Air Force B-17 bomber, The Memphis Belle. Here three veterans huddle together in the plexiglass nose of the aircraft flying them back home. Back in their Midwestern town of Boone City, former bank executive Fredric March, ex-soda jerk Dana Andrews and maimed sailor Harold Russell (a real veteran who lost both his arms in combat) attempt to pick up the threads of their lives. March discovers that he has grown apart from his wife Myrna Loy and is a stranger to his daughter Teresa Wright. Andrews, reduced agin to the rank of soda jerk after serving as an officer, is disillusioned with the wife (played by Virginia Mayo) he had known for only 20 days before he went away to fight. And Russell, giving an exceptionally moving performance, rejects his fiancée Cathy O'Donnell because he fears her pity. With its screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood adapted from the book by MacKinlay Kantor, and the superb deep-focus photography of master lighting cameraman Gregg Toland, The Best Years of Our Lives combines laughter, tears, romance and social comment in a powerful package that will strike a chord with audiences nationwide.
- Paris, 13 December:
 The fifth presentation of the Louis Delluc Prize has gone to Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (Beauty and the Beast), released last October. For his first feature-length film, Cocteau has drawn on a fairy story by Madame Leprince de Beaumont, dating from 1757. The film was shot last winter at the Saint-Maurice studios, and most of the exteriors were filmed in the semi-wild park of the Raray Château in the Oise region. The sets and costumes by Christian Bérard, and the photography by Henri Alekan have created a magic world. Cocteau stated that he discouraged both Bérard and Alekan from virtuosity in order to show unreality in realistic terms. But thankfully, virtuosity is evident in the scenes in the Beast's castle. Jean Marais, behind extraordinary makeup, is touching, and Beauty (Josette Day) seems rather disappointed when he turns into his romantic self. However, in the magazine Christian Witness, Michel de Saint-Pierre thought Cocteau's style was "surrealism which would have seemed audacious around 1916." Nevertheless, most critics believe it to be a fairy tale for children and intelligent adults.
- Paris, 22 December: French gala premiere of Vittorio De Sica's Sciuscia (Shoeshine), with Rinaldo Smordoni and Franco Interlengi as the two enterprising shoeshine boys.
- Los Angeles, 31 December: At a staggering $120 million, the combined profits of the eight biggest studios have almost doubled in comparison with the already record figures for 1945.
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5 January - Los Angeles, 
5 March - Hollywood