- Hollywood, 3 January: Alfred Hitchcock has just signed a contract with Warner Bros., in which he agrees to make four films in the next six years.
- Los Angeles, 6 January: Humphrey Bogart is a father. Wife Lauren Bacall has just given birth to their first child, Stephen.
- Paris, 10 January: Yves Allégret has started shooting Manèges (Wanton), starring Simone Signoret and Bernard Blier.
- Los Angeles, 20 January: Release of A Letter to Three Wives, by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas and Ann Sothern.
- Paris, 20 January: Premiere of Une Se jolie petite plage (Riptide), by Yves Allégret, with Gérard Philipe and Madeleine Robinson. Hunted by the police for the murder of a dancer, a man returns to the scene of his childhood.
- England, 26 January: Release of The Passionate Friends, directed by David Lean, with Ann Todd and Claude Rains.
- Washington, DC, 25 February: Paramount has signed the anti-trust agreement, aimed at separating production and distribution, whereby it will hand over its cinema network interests. The 1,450-strong theatre circuit is to be taken over by a new company and reduced by one-third to 600 theatres by 1952.
- Paris, 25 February: The Éclair company has launched the portable Camiflex 300, using Andre Coutant's patents.
- London, 7 March:
 In January 1945, as the war drew to a close, Michael Balcon, the head of Ealing studios, outlined a bold program for postwar British cinema: "British films must present to the world a picture of Britain as a leader in social reform, in the defeat of social injustices and a champion of civil liberties... Britain as a questing explorer, adventurer and trader..." Part of this pledge has been fulfilled in Ealing's Scott of the Antarctic, directed by Charles Frend. The British are curiously attached to heroic failures, and in this sad canon there are few more notable than than of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's doomed attempt to race the Norwegian explorer Amundsen to the South Pole. Scott and his party perished on the return journey, just short of a supply dump that might have saved them. The film, heavily based on Scott's diaries and shot in Technicolor on location in Switzerland and Norway, is a measured, slightly stilted account of the expedition, in which the stiff upper-lip reaction to disaster dominates, and the mood is one of wry understatement. John Mills portrays Scott, an English amateur bested by the professional Norwegians, with solid support coming from Harold Warrnder, Reginald Beckwith, Derek Bond and James Robertson Justice as his doomed companions. This unrelenting drama of Scott's terrible journey across the icy wastes is underpinned by Ralph Vaughn Williams' evocative score.
 - Paris, 7 March: During the shooting of a film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the two understudies of the leads fall in love. This is the basis for the scenario of André Cayatte's new film, Les Amants de Verone (The Lovers of Verona). Written by Jacques Prévert, it brings a fresh quality to the updating of the classic story. It was Prévert who had the idea of writing the part of the modern-day Juliet for 16-year-old Anouk Aimée. Her glowing beauty, the intensity of Serge Reggiani as her Romeo, the brilliant acting of Pierre Brasseur and Martine Carol, and the stunning location photography of Venice, should assure the film a wide success.
- Paris, 9 March: Release of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Manon, a transposition of Prévost's chivalric novel Manon Lescaut to the postwar years.
- Hollywood, 24 March:
 This year's Academy Awards presentation ceremony turned out to be a chaotically cramped affair. The decision to relocate the show from larger venues to the 950-seat Academy Theater was admirably motivated: the major Hollywood studios, sensitive to charges of having previously brought their influence to bear on the voters, had withdrawn all direct financial support of the event. But it resulted in an undignified scramble for places and the resignation of Academy President Jean Hersholt. Nevertheless, during the evening, presented by Robert Montgomery and Ava Gardner, there were lively musical interludes from Doris Day, Gordon Macrae and Jane Russell, and most of the awards were well deserved. Laurence Olivier's Hamlet was not only the first British, but also the first non-American film to win the Best Picture prize. Though Olivier lost out to John Huston as Best Director for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (for which the director's father, Walter Huston, won Best Supporting Actor), the great Shakespearean walked away with the Best Actor award for his performance in the title role of his film. Jane Wyman, who used to play pert chorines, obtained the Best Actress Oscar® for her heartbreaking portrayal of a deaf-mute farm girl in Johnny Belinda. And Claire Trevor received the Best Supporting Actress award for her performance as the boozy gangster's moll in John Huston's Key Largo.
- Paris, 28 March: Jean Gabin has married Christine Fournier, known as Dominique. It is the great French star's third marriage, his former wives were Gaby Basset and Doriane. His new wife, one of the top models for Lanvin, was introduced to Gabin at a dinner party. According to the happy couple, the meeting was a case of love at first sight. She has been seen every night, since 9 February, at the Ambassadeurs Theatre where Gabin is currently playing in La Soif.
- Peking, 31 March: A Cinema Board has been set up by the People's Liberation Army, which has been in control of the capital since January. Mu-jih Yuan, the head of the army's cinematographic section since 1938, has been chosen to run the Board.
- London, 1 April:
 After four years of postwar austerity there is an atmosphere of mild anarchy in the air, perfectly caught by Ealing's Passport to Pimlico, directed by Henry Cornelius and featuring Margaret Rutherford, Stanley Holloway and Philip Dupuis. In this pointed social satire, a small district in London wakes up to discover that it is part of the ancient dukedom of Burgundy. "Blimey, I'm a foreigner," gulps the local copper. So the inhabitants immediately establish their new kingdom as an independent, ration-free state, with hilarious results. This warm-hearted celebration of an embattled but united community, a metaphor for Ealing itself, keeps the spirit of the studio's wartime films burning in a Britain that's edging from austerity into affluence.
- Sicily, 4 April: Roberto Rossellini is shooting on location on the volcanic island of Stromboli, just off the straits of Messina, for Stromboli, terra di Dio, to star Ingrid Bergman and non-actor Mario Vitale, a fisherman.
 - New York, 10 April: Kirk Douglas takes the title role in United Artists' Champion, an adaptation of Ring Lardner's story of the rise and fall of a cocksure boxer whose savage fight scenes belie its soft center. Douglas, reveling in his role as a heel, double-crosses his manager Paul Stewart, two-times his wife Ruth Roman for blonde floozie Marilyn Maxwell, and then dumps her for Lola Albright. However, he does send money to his Mom and helps his cripple brother Arthur Kennedy. But his fails to save him from a KO come-uppance in the final reel, swiftly followed by madness and death.
- Paris, 21 April: Jean-Pierre Melville's first feature film Le Silence de la mer succeeds in transposing Vercor's practically unfilmable parable of the Resistance to the screen. The film is virtually a monologue by a German officer, but a good deal of what is going on beneath the surface is suggested by look and gesture. The actors, most particularly the Swiss Howard Vernon as the German officer Werner von Ebrennac, are all excellent.
- Paris, 4 May:
 Made in 1947, Jacques Tati's first feature film, Jour de fête, has only now been released. Tati has already appeared as an actor in Claude Autant-Lara's Sylvie et le phantôme (1945), and is the direcotr/performer of several short films, one of which, L'École des facteurs (School for Postmen) (1947), was a rough sketch for Jour de fête. As the postman in a French village who decides to emulate the high-speed delivery of mail in the US, Tati proves himself to be the true descendant of the silent movie comedians, relying as he does on sight gags. Shot with modest means, the film is packed with comic invention.
- New York, 12 May: The presshave attended a preview of Mark Robson's latest effort, Home of the Brave. It is the first film to deal with the problem of racial hatred in the army.
- Vallauris, 27 May: Rita Hayworth has married Prince Aly Khan.
 - Washington, DC, 8 June: In a cartoon published in the British newspaper Reynolds News, David Langdon shows Hollywood Boulevard packed with Stalin lookalikes. If the FBI is to be believed, this satirical vision is likely to come true. In the middle of a spy trial, the Bureau has released a confidential document that accuses a number of stars of being Communist sympathizers. Among those named are John Garfield, Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson and Sylvia Sidney. In addition, a Senate committee that is investigating anti-American activities has published an astonishing list of several hundred people alleged to have "followed the Communist Party line." Some of the biggest names in Hollywood crop up on this list: Charles Chaplin, Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, Fredric March, Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles. Most of them are well known for their liberal and progressive views, but the notion that the rich pastures of Beverly Hills have been colonized by hard-line Bolsheviks is absurd.
- London, 16 June:
 Certainly influenced by Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux, Ealing director Robert Hamer has produced a brilliantly barbed comedy of murder, Kind Hearts and Coronets. Adapted from Roy Horniman's Wildean novel of decadence, Israel Rank, the film stars Dennis Price as a social outcast who murders his way to a dukedom through an entire family of unspeakable relatives. All eight D'Ascoynes are portrayed by Alec Guinness in a series of neatly observed cameos, from ferocious suffragette Aunt Edith, whose balooning activites are brought to an abrupt end by a well-placed arrow, to blustering General D'Ascoyne who meets his end while digging into a booby-trapped pot of caviar. The film's feline script, by John Dighton, Hamer's elegant interplay between word and image, and the smooth visual surface provided by cameraman Douglas Slocombe, have created a masterpiece of black comedy. Above all, Price's cooly considered performance as the calculating and self-possessed murderer Louis Mazzini marks him out as an actor to watch.
- Rome, 18 June: Abel Gance and producer Georges de la Grandière have been given a private audience by Pope Pius XII at the Vatican, where they discussed their project on the life of Christ, The Divine Tragedy.
 - New York, 8 July: Ayn Rand's best-selling 1943 novel, The Fountainhead, has been brought to the screen by King Vidor, with a script by Rand herself. Although the film version has diluted some of the book's more extreme views, it has, nevertheless, retained much of its powerful symbolism -- the phallic buildings and tools employed, the hero's climactic ascent by construction elevator to the top of the cloud-surrounded tower. The normally taciturn Gary Cooper is somewhat miscast as Howard Roark, the uncompromising architect based on Frank Lloyd Wright. Yet, Patricia Neal as the architecture critic who is sexually drawn to him, and Raymond Massey, as her unscrupulous publisher, deliver the verbose dialogue with gusto. The musical score by Max Steiner perfectly underlines the drama, and Edward Carrere has provided brilliant sets and designs. Vidor wanted Wright himself to design the film, but studio head Jack L. Warner vetoed the idea.
- Berlin, 15 July: The direct control of German film production exercised by the Allies has been replaced by a production code based on the American one.
- Los Angeles, 6 August:
 Reports from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, confirming the details of Ingrid Bergman's liaison with Roberto Rossellini, are causing a scandal in the film community and shock the American people, who took the Swedish star to their hearts after the release of Intermezzo 10 years ago. Bergman arrived in Rome on 20 March this year, prior to filming Stromboli for the Italian director. Their collaboration began when the actress wrote to Rossellini expressing her admiration for his film Roma Città Aperta (Rome: Open City), and making clear her desire to work with him. They met in Paris last summer, and in January this year Rossellini came to Los Angeles for further discussions, staying with Bergman and her husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom. Close observers noted the growing bond between the actress and her guest, and Lindstrom was not happy about his wife's visit to Rome. Now, having completed location filming on the island of Stromboli (after which the film is named), Bergman is back in Rome. Throughout the arduous shoot, financed by Howard Hughes, rumors ran wild about the adulterous nature of the relationship between Bergman and Rossellini. The rumors are now confirmed: the couple are living together as man and wife and, worse still, the star, who already has a small daughter (Pia) by her husband, is pregnant. The situation is now a cause célèbre here, with Americans unwilling to forgive a once much-loved star whose reputation has been built on an image of moral purity and family values.
 - Los Angeles, 2 September: "Top of the world, Ma!" shrieks psychopathic mobster James Cagney as he goes up in flames at the end of Raoul Walsh's pulsating White Heat. As the mother-fixated Cody Jarrett, Cagney delivers an electric performance as a helpless, manic outlaw running wildly out of control. Cornered by the cops, he goes out with a bang as he turns a fuel tank into a colossal fireball.
- Paris, 3 September: After a widely talked about affair, Micheline Presle has finally married the American producer Bill Marshall, formerly married to another French actress, Michèle Morgan.
- Cannes, 17 September:
 Since the creation of the Cannes Festival, the mayor of the city and the organizers of the festival have wanted to open the Festival Palace on the Croisette, which they had claimed to be "worthy of good taste and French art." It was with pride then that they were finally able to inaugurate the building in the presence of celebrities from around the world. But the edifice, started hastily in 1947, still resembles a building site, as it continues to be patched up. Meanwhile, sightseers could catch a glimpse of Martine Carol, Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli and many other international stars, entering the unfinished Palace.
 This year's festival saw 80 countries participating, some with a single short film, and others such as France, the US, Italy and England with full-length features. It was, therefore, expected that those four countries mentioned should have shared the bulk of the awards. English director Carol Reed's The Third Man walked off with the Grand Prix, while the Frenchman René Clément took the best director prize for The Walls of Malapaga, co-produced by Italy. Isa Miranda was presented with the best actress award for her role as the lonely waitress in the latter film. America's consolation came in the form of Edward G. Robinson's best actor performance in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's House of Strangers, and also Virginia Shaler's award for her best screenplay, Lost Boundaries, directed by Alfred Werker, which deals with racism.
- Hollywood, 29 September: Singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis have made a film together, My Friend Irma, directed by George Marshall.
- Stockholm, 17 October: In the newly released Torst (Thirst), Ingmar Bergman invites audiences to follow the tortured journey taken by a couple who are torn apart by their inability to communicate.
- Padua, 26 October: Pier Paolo Pasolini has been expelled from the Italian Communist Party in disgrace for "morally and politically unacceptable behavior" after members received a police report on his homosexuality.
- Rome, 1 November:
 New director Giuseppe De Santis, a friend of Luchino Visconti and the screenwriter on Visconti's Ossessione, has retained the passion he had when he was a critic for the magazine Cinema. His first film, Tragic Hunt (Caccia Tragica) in 1947, placed him among the leading Italian neo-realists, the movement that he had helped formulate as a critic. In Bitter Rice (Riso Amaro), De Santis has returned to the countryside of his youth in the Po Valley. The slightly melodramatic storyline deals with one of the many urban women who come each year to work in the rice fields, wading up to their waists in the water. There is no doubt that Bitter Rice will make the 19-year-old Silvana Mangano, Miss Rome of 1946, into a star. The voluptuous Mangano in thigh-revealing shorts and torn nylons, her ample breasts thrust forward, her seductive head held high, standing in a rice paddy, is the film's most memorable image and the one that audiences will take with them. Ostensibly a neo-realist exposé of the exploitation of women workers, the steamy film in reality exposes more of Mangano than its subject.
- Los Angeles, 4 November: Director Nicholas Ray's first film They Live by Night, with Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger in the leading roles, has been released today in the US. Unusually, it had already been released in Europe.
 - Los Angeles, 8 November: Since returning from war service, burly Broderick Crawford, the son of thespians Lester Crawford and Helen Broderick, has been mostly confined to parts in cheap Westerns. Now Robert Rossen has cast him as the demagogic Southern politician Willie Stark in All the King's Men, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren. Stark is closely modeled on the Louisiana "Kingfisher" Huey Long. It's a part perfectly tailored to fit Crawford's belligerent and bullying style, and provides an example of actor and character becoming completely one. There is strong support from Mercedes McCambridge, and from John Ireland as the cynical journalist who narrates this cautionary political tale. This picture also gives Ireland the chance to appear in a film with his new wife, Joanne Dru.
- Mexico, 25 November:
 After dropping out of sight since his departure from the United States, Luis Buñuel has been discovered living in Mexico where two films he made have just been released. They are a musical, Gran Casino made in 1947, and a melodrama called El Gran Calavera. Buñuel's last assignment as director of a feature film had been in 1933. Between 1944 and 1946, the Spanish emigré had worked at Warner Bros. dubbing and supervising foreign versions of Hollywood films. He had been under consideration for the assignment of director of The Beast With Five Fingers, but the job went to Robert Florey. After another abortive project, Buñuel was welcomed by Mexico.
 - Paris, 6 December: Jacques Becker's new film, Rendezvous de juillet, tells the story of a group of young people planning to make an anthropoligical documentary in Africa, and who attempt to find maturity and happiness through love, theater and jazz. The film presents a vivid picture of French youth marked by the war, and evokes the Saint-Germain-des-Prés jazz clubs that they frequent. Since getting a cool reception at the Cannes Film Festival, Becker has re-edited and reduced his film's length. The more concise and lucid version has been sufficiently appreciated to win this year's Prix Louis Delluc.
- Hollywood, 8 December:
 The dancer Gene Kelly, who made The Pirate last year under Vincente Minnelli, has now become a director himself. Conceived balletically and co-directed by Kelly's colleague and friend, the choreographer Stanley Donen, On the Town is a joyous and innovative musical that follows three sailors (Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin) on a 24-hour leave in New York. The opening number "New York, New York" was actually filmed on location in that "wonderful town." After the trio has paired off with three girls (Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett and Ann Miller), the six go visit the Empire State Building, this time a Hollywood set, more exciting and colorful than the real thing.
With dozens of exterior location shots filmed in Gotham and full of dynamic dance numbers produced for MGM by Arthur Freed, the film was freely adapted by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from the Leonard Bernstein Broadway hit.
- Washington, DC, 9 December: Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, former chairman of the HUAC and leader in the fight against Communist influence and lax morals, has been sentenced to 10 months imprisonment for embezzlement.
- Mexico, 20 December: Congress has answered the demands of professionals by voting in a law to protect the cinema industry from the importation of films. This measure is aimed especially at American productions.
- Santa Barbara, 21 December: Clark Gable has never been the same man since the tragic death of Carole Lombard in 1942. Now it seems that he has rediscovered a measure of happiness with Sylvia Hawkes, former wife of Lord Ashley, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Baron Stanley of Alderly. Clark and Sylvia have known each other for only a few weeks. Their whirlwind romance became a marriage when Gable, fortified by a bottle of champagne, whisked Hawkes off to a quiet wedding by the sea. The witnesses were Gable's secretary and an MGM publicity man. Gable's sudden decision to tie the knot has caused alarm among his family and friends.
- New York, 25 December: Release of George Cukor's Adam's Rib, starring Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and Judy Holliday.
- Rome, 29 December: A new law designed to promote the cinema industry has been passed on the initiative of Giulio Andreotti. The law will increase subsidies but also strengthen government control over film censorship.
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20 April - Cloquet, MN,