Best Picture: The Bridge on the River Kwai Best Director: David Lean Best Actor: Alec Guinness Best Actress: Joanne Woodward Best Supporting Actor: Red Buttons Best Supporting Actress: Miyoshi Umeki View all the Oscars® for 1957

The Year in Summary: With the exception of Paramount, all the major film companies, who had been blaming their troubles on television, had sold all their output prior to 1948 to their arch-enemy, and by 1958 Paramount had joined the parade. Television indeed had taken its toll on Hollywood. Most of the major studios were making fewer films, and some of them were shut down entirely for long periods. More American films were being shot in foreign lands than ever before in the history of motion pictures. It was cheaper. One encouraging note: While the quantity was less, the quality, on the whole, was better. The year's output included such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Sayonara, Peyton Place, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Twelve Angry Men, The Young Strangers, Edge of the City and A Hatful of Rain. In the foreign field, two newcomers were good box-office bets. French actress Brigitte Bardot was a sensation in And God Created Woman, and Maria Schell, a Swiss actress, was equally effective in Gervaise. Other new faces included Joanne Woodward, Robert Evans, James MacArthur, Jean Seberg and Diane Varsi. Death took Humphrey Bogart, Norma Talmadge, Oliver Hardy, Erich von Stroheim and Louis B. Mayer.

New York, 2 January: The women's fashion press has just elected the best dressed women of the year. Among them are Princess Grace of Monaco, Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich. Tokyo, 15 January: Opening of Kurosawa's film Kumonosu-Jo (Throne of Blood aka Castle of the Spider's Web), a new version of Shakespeare's Macbeth set in medieval Japan, with Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. Los Angeles, 17 January: Three days ago Humphrey Bogart lost a long battle against throat cancer. The slide began after an operation in March last year, but Bogey, unwilling to change the habits of a lifetime, continued to smoke and drink whiskey. At the end he was so weak and emaciated that a service elevator was converted to bring the wheelchair-bound star downstairs to meet friends. Today, after a short funeral service, Bogart was cremated at Forest Lawn. Beside him was a whistle as a reminder of To Have and Have Not. Paris, 18 January: Actress Maria Schell has signed a contract to play the leading role in Alexandre Astruc's latest film Une Vie, adapted from the novel by Guy de Maupassant. New York, 20 January: Ingrid Bergman has at last returned to New York and the arms of the American people. The reconciliation has been effected by the success of Anastasia, directed by Anatole Litvak, in which she plays an amnesiac refugee selected by Yul Brynner to impersonate the surviving daughter of Czar Nicholas II. Meanwhile, her marriage to Roberto Rossellini has hit the skids. Bergman has been nominated for an Oscar® for Anastasia, and has already received the New York Critics award for her performance. Mexico, 2 February: Although she has not officially divorced Michael Wilding, Elizabeth Taylor has pressed ahead with her marriage to Mike Todd, tying the knot in the small Mexican village of Puerto Marquez, far away from the complictions of the American legal system. It is the third time around for both Taylor and Todd, who was previously married to Joan Blondell. Producer and originator of the Todd-AO wide-screen process, Todd met Taylor during the filming of Around the World in 80 Days. He swept Liz off her feet, presenting her with a $30,000 ring, which she has pointedly worn on her left ring finger in the presence of the hapless Wilding. Taylor's attachment to the bauble became so great that she even tried surreptitiously to wear it during the shooting of Raintree County. Todd, who is 25 years Taylor's senior, laid on a characteristically opulent ceremony: over 15,000 flowers, dozens of cases of champagne and a small mountain of caviar, although there were few people present at the reception. Those guests who were there included singer Eddie Fisher, his wife Debbie Reynolds and Cantinflas, who had the role of Passepartout in Around the World in 80 Days. The happy couple will shortly sail for Europe, where thay are planning to interrupt their honeymoon to drop in on the Cannes Film Festival. New York, 8 February: The American male's obsession with big breasts has found its perfect incarnation in the sumptuous 40-19-36 statistics of Jayne Mansfield, who shot to stardom last year in Frank Tashlin's rock 'n' roll comedy, The Girl Can't Help It, memorably clutching two milk bottles to her ample bosom. Today sees the release of another Tashlin picture titled Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, in which Tony Randall plays an ad-man trying to persuade movie star Mansfield to endorse Stay-Put lipstick. Whether the 24-year-old former beauty queen will stay put on the movie scene remains to be seen. Stockholm, 16 February: Ingmar Bergman's 17th film, Det Sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal), has definitely set him firmly in the pantheon of directors. After his bubbling comedy of manners, Sommarnattens leende (Smiles of a Summer Night), which received worldwide acclaim two years ago, Bergman has now returned to explore the darker side of life. The Seventh Seal, shot in only 35 days, is a medieval morality tale that powerfully depicts the cruelties of the time such as witch burning and flagellation, as well as the joys and aspirations of ordinary people. This film follows, in luminous images derived from early church paintings, the journeys of a knight (Max von Sydow) returning from the Crusades through a Sweden ravaged by plague. In his search for God, he meets a group of strolling players, suffering peasants, and Death (Bengt Ekerot) himself, with whom the knight plays a deadly game of chess. Hollywood, 18 February: Orson Welles has begun filming Touch of Evil for Universal Studios. The cast is headed by Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and the director himself. It is his first US film since Macbeth in 1948. Paris, 19 February: The Lutetia production company has threatened Brigitte Bardot with a lawsuit if she continues to fail to turn up on the set of La Chatte (The Cat), based on Colette's novel. The film's producers are prepared to sue her for the sum of $50 million in damages -- the star's casual attitude could cost her dearly. London, 22 February: During the shooting of Otto Preminger's Saint Joan, the actress Jean Seberg narrowly escaped being burnt alive while shooting the sequence where she is tied to the stake for just such a fate in the film. Washington, DC, 26 February: James Stewart has been promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in the U.S. Air Force. President Eisenhower himself conferred this honor on the actor. Rome, 21 March: John Huston, who had just begun filming A Farewell to Arms from the novel by Ernest Hemingway, has been sacked by the producer David O. Selznick; the director Charles Vidor is to replace him. Hollywood, 27 March: The fact that flamboyant showman-producer Michael Todd, whose film Around the World in 80 Days carried off five Oscars®, had never worked in the movies before was only one of the oddities at this year's Academy Awards ceremony. The Best Actor Oscar® was awarded to the virtually unknown, bald Yul Brynner, who claims to be a gypsy born in Outer Mongolia, for his performance as the despotic King of Siam in The King and I; the Best Actress went to Ingrid Bergman for the title role in Anastasia, after she had been ostracized by Hollywood for many years; and James Dean, for the second year running, was a posthumous nominee for Best Actor in Giant. Although Around the World in 80 Days may be the most star-studded movie of all time, it failed to gain any acting honors, its Oscars® being awarded for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Musical Score. Much of the film was shot around the world in 70mm Todd-AO and Eastman Color, as Inspector Fix (Robert Newton) follows Phileas Fogg (David Niven) and Passpartout (Cantinflas). New York, 28 March: Audrey Hepburn has made her first screen musical, Funny Face, co-starring with the doyen of dance, 57-year-old Fred Astaire, who is still spry, graceful and charming. Directed by Stanley Donen, the "Cinderella" story tells of a Greenwich Village bluestocking (Hepburn) transformed into a top model by a fashion photographer (Astaire), in the face of oppostion from his Vogue-type editor (Kay Thompson). Around this -- and a sub-plot that takes a side-swipe at phony intellectuals -- a spell is woven of song, dance, Paris locations and a spectacular Givenchy wardrobe for Hepburn, under the supervisory visual eye of photographer Richard Avedon, on whom Astaire's character is said to be based. From the first Paris number, "Bonjour Paree," where Astaire, Thompson and Hepburn run into each other atop the Eiffel Tower in triple split-screen, through the outdoor photo sessions, to the romantic finale ("S'Wonderful") in a churchyard, the film lovingly captures Paris -- and the magic essence of Hepburn. And it does so in a swirl of energy and high spirits, wonderfully orchestrated by Donen, a former dancer, choreographer and an integral member of MGM's famous Freed unit. New York, 9 April: The team of producer Harold Hecht Hecht, director Delbert Mann and writer Paddy Chayefsky have followed up their success with Marty (1955) with The Bachelor Party. Set in a cheerless New York at night, the film traces the attempts of five office workers to enjoy the final moments of bachelorhood of one of their number. But instead of having a good time, their emotional problems come to the surface. Each of the relatively unknown actors (Don Murray, E. G. Marshall, Jack Warden, Philip Abbott and Larry Blyden) gives an excellent, realistic performance in a downbeat but impressive movie, and Carolyn Jones is memorable in an 8-minute screen appearance as The Existentialist. Cannes, 22 April: The People's Republic of China has withdrawn from the Festival competition on learning that Taiwan is also taking part. Warsaw, 23 April: Polish films had disappeared during the six years of war. Technical equipment was destroyed by the Germans, and the directors sought asylum in London and New York. In 1945, the cinema became nationalized, with a leaning towards Soviet ideology, and the output remained feeble and lacking in originality. But since the death of Stalin in 1953, there have been profound changes. Young directors are beginning to emerge, determinted to make films with a personal stamp, something that was eclipsed by commissioned works. One of them is Andrzej Wajda (born in 1926), who launched a bitter and anti-romantic cry of hatred against war in Pokolenie (A Generation) three years ago. Now his second feature, Kanal, pays homage to the heroes of the 1944 Warsaw uprising. The son of a cavalry officer killed in World War II, Wajda joined the Polish resistance at the age of 16. Much of this claustrophobic and often depressing film takes place in the sewers of the city, into which a group of partisans has been forced. The events that take place underground reveal bravery, cowardice, fidelity and treason, with the sewers becoming a tomb. Despite some heavy-handed symbolic references to Dante's Inferno, the powerful theme and imagery should awaken the world to the new Polish cinema. France, 12 May: The celebrated film director, writer and actor Erich von Stroheim has died peacefully in his sleep at the Château de Maurepas in Seine-et-Oise, 30 miles outside Paris, which he shared with the French actress Denise Vernac, his collaborator and close companion for almost 20 years. Stroheim was born, the son of a Jewish hatmaker, in Vienna on 22 September 1885. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1909, arriving in Hollywood in 1914. After initially making his name as an actor, he emerged as a leading director of silents from his first remarkable feature, Blind Husbands (1919) to Queen Kelly, halted midway through filming in 1929. In the sound era he was best known as an actor, particularly for Sunset Boulevard (1950), though he continued writing and developing othe projects. Two months before his death, his genius was recognized with the award of the French Legion of Honor. Paris, 18 May: At the Maison des Lettres, Claude Lelouch, a young director, is presenting Vers une nouvelle technique (Towards a New Technique), three short 16mm experimental films. New York, 28 May: After their triumphant collaboration on On the Waterfront (1954), director Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg have teamed up again for A Face in the Crowd, a powerful indictment of the processes through which personalities are manufactured by television to be then accepted at face value by the public at large. In addition to Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa and Walter Matthau, the cast includes two highly impressive screen debutants. Andy Griffith is both charming and repulsive in the role of Lonesome Rhodes, a hillbilly philosopher on a local radio station made into a star, and 21-year-old Lee Remick as a nubile sexy drum-majorette. New York, 29 May: The legendary lawman Wyatt Earp rides again, this time in the form of quietly-spoken Burt Lancaster in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral directed by John Sturges. Shooting it out at his side is the more explosive Kirk Douglas as the doomed Doc Holliday, gambler, gunman and sometime dentist. Jo Van Fleet gives a powerful performance as the Doc's woman, Kate Fisher, too smart to be fooled by his charm but too weak to break away from him. The climactic gunfight with the Clanton family, probably the most celebrated piece of gunplay in Western history, occupies six minutes of film time, but took Sturges 44 hours to film to his satisfaction. Washington, DC, 1 June: The playwright Arthur Miller has been found guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to reveal to the HUAC the names of members of a literary circle suspected of Communist affiliations. Paris, 7 June: At the Rex, the first escalators to be installed in a movie theater were set in motion by Gary Cooper and Mylene Demongeot. New York, 9 June: There are currently 6,000 drive-in theaters in America and operators predict this number should rise to 10,000 in two years. Many of today's drive-ins have fully-equipped children's playgrounds, supermarket-sized cafeterias and an "all weather" theater for those who prefer to sit indoors in bad weather. Los Angeles, 19 June: "Match me, Sidney!" rasps Burt Lancaster's ruthless New York gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker as his groveling gofer Sidney Falco, protrayed by Tony Curtis, gropes for a light. Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Alexander Mackendrick who has returned from Britain's Ealing studios to his native America to deliver a blistering exposé of the world of press agents and columnists. And the resemblance between Hunsecker and Walter Winchell is wholly intentional. Berlin, 5 July: Almost the whole of Twelve Angry Men takes place in a jury room where the jury is deliberating whether a slum kid is guilty of knifing his father. It is doubtful that the jury of the Berlin Film Festival had such a tough time reaching its decision to award the Golden Bear to this gripping drama. Having directed the expertly contrived Reginald Rose play for television, Sidney Lumet, making his first feature, shot the film in 20 days, creating an intimate, sweaty, claustrophobic atmosphere. A great deal of pleasure is drived from watching each excellent actor do his turn, as Henry Fonda persuades them, one by one, to return a verdict of not guilty. Paris, 8 July: Ingrid Bergman has been reunited with her daughter, Pia Lindstrom, whom she has not seen since she left the US in 1949 to work with Roberto Rossellini. When that relationship turned into an affair and marriage, Bergman's former husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, refused the star access to her child. Now, at last, they are together in Paris, where Bergman is starring in a French stage production of Tea and Sympathy. New Orleans, 18 July: Robert Rossen's new film, Island in the Sun, opened today in spite of objections from a citizen's council chapter and an American Legion committee over the film's content -- a romance between a colored man (Harry Belafonte) and a beautiful white woman (Joan Fontaine). Hollywood, 20 July: With An Affair to Remember, which opens here today, veteran director Leo McCarey has pulled off a unique and extraordinary career double. In 1939, he made Love Affair, from a story he wrote with Mildred Cram, and a screenplay by Delmer Daves and Donald Ogden Stewart. The 89-minute, black-and-white film starred Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne and told the story of a sophisticated European man of the world who meets and falls in love with a New York girl on board a transatlantic liner. A huge success, the film picked up five Academy Award nominations and today is considered a jewel in the crown of 1930s Hollywood romantic comedies, treasured for the quality of the repartee, as well as its stylish tone and marvelous performances. Now, 18 years later, come An Affair to Remember, the mixture as before, but brought up to date, running at 114 minutes and made in CinemaScope and color. The new script is by McCarey himself with Delmer Daves, and the new stars are the serenely lovely Deborah Kerr as a very classy ex-nightclub singer, and Cary Grant as the wealthy bachelor playboy who woos, wins, and almost loses her. Congratulations are in order all around. McCarey retains all his style and assurance, and his players are an equal match for their illustrious predecessors. The lush sentimentality of the movie is nicely balanced by the witty script and the polish and sincerity of the performances, particularly that of Miss Kerr, Hollywood's treasurable "English rose." Paris, 24 July: Sacha Guitry has died peacefully in his Paris apartment surrounded by his wife, Lana Marconi, his secretary, Stéphane Prince, and his faithful friend Albert Willemetz. The son of the actor Lucien Guitry, Sacha was born in St. Petersburg on 21 February 1885. An actor since the age of 14, he wrote his first play in 1902, and directed his first film in 1915. As a director, he will be remembered for Pasteur (1935), Le Roman d'un tricheur (The Story of a Cheat, 1936), les Perles de la couronne (Pearls of the Crown, 1937), and Napoléon (1955). The funeral will take place at the cemetery in Montmartre. Rome, 7 September: After seven years of marriage, actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini have decided to separate. Rossellini, who is reportedly in love with a young Indian woman, has given Bergman custody of their three children, Roberto, Ingrid and Isabella, on the condition she stays in Europe until they are of age. The actress is leaving for Paris tomorrow to continue rehearsals for Robert Anderson's play Tea and Sympathy at the Théâtre de Paris. Venice, 9 September: Audiences and critics were split down the middle in their reactions to this year's awards at the Venice Film Festival. Two films hotly contested the top prize: Satyajit Ray's Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Luchino Visconti's Le Notti bianche (White Nights). When the Golden Lion was presented to the Ray picture, there were as many jeers as cheers. Perhaps there were a number of Italian chauvinists among those who were against the Indian film. Aparajito is the sensitive sequel to Pather Panchali, the story of the boy Apu growing up in a small Bengali village. The film is a world away from the crass commercial Indian cinema. The Visconti picture, which won the Silver Lion, is a charming stylized adaptation of the Dostoevsky short story, relocated to Italy and starring Maria Schell, Marcello Mastroianni and Jean Marais. Mexico, 17 September: Sophia Loren, aged 23, has married 46-year-old producer Carlo Ponti in Juarez, a Mexican town just over the border from California. The young Italian star has been pursuing a Hollywood career for a year with the assistance of Ponti, who negotiated her contracts. But the couple were not themselves present for the ceremony, having delegated the power of signature to their lawyers. Loren is about to begin shooting her fourth American-produced film, Desire Under the Elms. Hollywood, 22 September: Actress Kim Novak has gone on strike. She considers her popularity to be worth more than her current salary of $1,250 per week. Hollywood, 30 September: Lauren Bacall has formally denied rumors of a forthcoming marriage to Frank Sinatra. Kentucky, 2 October: After a traumatic production history, in which Montgomery Clift was badly scarred in an automobile crash, Raintree County has hit the screen. It is an egregious attempt by MGM to outdo Gone With the Wind, starring Elizabeth Taylor in Scarlett O'Hara mode as a petulant Southern belle, and a mannered Clift portraying a man seeking his destiny. However, ghoulish moviegoers are trying to spot the shots of Clift before the wreck and after. Although his face was patched up after the auto smash, it seems that Clift has lost his special beauty, and is aware of it. It remains to be seen whether the physical and psychological scars Clift has sustained will strengthen him as an actor or undermine the intense concentration he has shown in films like Red River and From Here to Eternity. Paris, 3 October: Jayne Mansfield, who is here for the opening of her film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, directed by Frank Tashlin, happened to meet Greta Garbo at Maxims and was quick to ask for an autograph. Hollywood, 10 October: RKO studios have been sold to Desilu, the television production company founded by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, stars of the famous "I Love Lucy" TV series. London, 13 October: A newspaper has disclosed that the Indian actress Anna Kashfi, whom Marlon Brando has just discreetly married, is in fact the daughter of a Welsh laborer and is named Joan O'Callaghan. Paris, 24 October: Charles Chaplin's new film, A King in New York, is showing at the Gaumont Palace in the French capital, six weeks after its London premiere. Filmed in Britain at Shepperton studios, A King in New York is a companion piece to The Great Dictator, that switches the satirical attack from the fascists of the 1930s to the American McCarthyites of the 1950s -- the very people who sent Chaplin into exile in Switzerland. Chaplin casts himself as the exiled King Shahdov, colliding unhappily with American materialism and mania for social conformity. In the process he exacts a vicarious revenge on the House Un-American Activities Committee by drenching a bunch of fatuous American politicians with a fire hose. Critics are divided over the film, but it contains some memorable moments of slapstick, notably when the exiled king resorts to sign language to order caviar in a crowded restaurant. Perhaps Chaplin still hankers after the lost glories of the silent cinema. Hollywood, 29 November: Composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, aged 60, has died. The former child prodigy from Czechoslovakia won two Oscars® for film musical scores. He first came to Hollywood in 1934 to arrange the music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. London, 29 November: The futility of war is the underlying theme of The Bridge on the River Kwai, Sam Spiegel's impressive new $3 million production. Filmed on location in the jungles and mountains of Ceylon, the 161-minute epic, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle, tells of how badly-treated British POWs in Burma were forced to build a massive bridge in dreadful conditions. The film, however, centers on the clash of wills between a martinet, strictly-by-the-book British colonel (Alec Guinness) and the equally duty-bound Japanese commander (Sessue Hayakawa). The latter insists that officers as well as enlisted men take part in the construction. Guinness disagrees, refuses to acquiesce, and is punished by torture. Ironically, the completion of the bridge then becomes his obsession. Director David Lean's strong cinematic eye and his ability to tell a story with maximum impact are demonstrated to perfection. The magnificent Alec Guinness gets fine support from William Holden and Jack Hawkins, among the cast. Paris, 4 December: Claude Chabrol, a film critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, has commenced shooting his first feature-length film, Le Bleu Serge (Bitter Reunion), starring Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernadette Lafont. Stockholm, 26 December: For the leading role in his most recent film, Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries), Ingmar Bergman, the great Swedish director of today, has chosen Victor Sjöström, the great Swedish director of yesterday. In fact, the older director's The Phantom Carriage was a powerful influence on the younger man. The 78-year-old Sjöström plays Professor Borg, who travels by car with his daughter-in-law (Ingrid Thulin) from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary doctorate. On the way there, a visit to the family home and various meetings inspire reminiscences, insights into his own shortcomings, and intimations of mortality. Although Bergman's previous film, The Seventh Seal, was set in medieval times, Wild Strawberries is a complementary work. Borg, like the Knight, pursues a quest, not for God but for self-understanding. The car journey functions as a pilgrimage into his own personality. The action moves between past and present, fantasy and reality, with a significant dream sequence at the beginning. The flashbacks that the old man "enters" unobserved by the people of his past are filmed lyrically, in contrast to the harsh cutting and bleak lighting of his present. Bergman has gathered around Sjöström his brilliant repertory company, including Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson and Gunnar Björnstrand. Gunnar Fischer, Bergman's regular cameraman, proves himself once again a master of black-and-white imagery, particularly on the outdoor location shots. New York, 27 December: The powerful anti-militarist stance of Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory has come opportunely in the aftermath of the Korean War, although the film is set in France in 1916. The story is based on an actual incident when a general ordered a captain to fire on his own troops becamse some of them refused to go over the top. The captain defied orders, and three men were chosen at random and executed. The affair was hushed up by the French authorities at the time. This bitterly ironic and moving film has already been banned in parts of Europe and in U.S. military movie theaters. London, 29 December: Henry King's The Sun Also Rises is released today in the U.K. This 20th Century-Fox production stars Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer, Errol Flynn and Eddie Albert. New York, 31 December: Release in the U.S. of Georg Wilhelm Pabst's 1954 West German production Das Bekenntnis der Ina Kahr, starring Curd Jürgens, retitled for American distribution as Afraid to Love.