- Prague, 2 January: Director Jiri Trnka has started filming Kybernetika Babicka (Cybernetic Grandma), a puppet film that deals with the problems associated with man's reaction to advances in technology.
- Tokyo, 2 January: Release of Kurosawa's film, Tsubaki Sanjuro (Sanjuro), which stars Toshiro Mifune. Eight young warriors and a wandering samurai take on a corrupt lord in this satirical historical "Eastern-Western."
- Rome, 6 January: Renato Salvatori and Annie Girardot were married today. The two actors first met while filming Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and his Brothers).
- Rome, 15 January: The producer Dino De Laurentiis has laid the foundation stone for the Dinocittà studio.
- Los Angeles, 20 January: To allay rumors about a return to 20th Century-Fox, Darryl F. Zanuck has left the following memo: "I am not bitter, but I have reached the age... where I cannot spend my days with people I would not like to have dinner with..."
- Paris, 24 January:
 A ménage à trois is the subject of François Truffaut's new film, Jules et Jim, a story that might have been sordid in anyone else's hands. It tells of how close friends, the German Jules (Oskar Werner) and the Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre) both fall in love with Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). However, Jules marries her and takes her back to Germany. World War I separates the two friends even further, and when they meet again after hostilities, Catherine decides to change partners. Although Truffaut's invigorating tale of friendship and love is full of cinematic allusions (one to Chaplin's The Kid), and is an homage to Jean Renoir, it is a unique piece of filmmaking. The director, while he remains true to Henri-Pierre Roché's first novel, employs a wide range of cinematic devices to express the shifting moods of the characters and plot, including both stills and newsreels. The three leads are delightful, and Moreau's charming singing of "le Tourbillon" is a memorable moment. Truffaut came across the novel as long ago as 1953, and determined then to film it one day. It is a dream come true.
- Paris, 27 January: In Le Monde, François Truffaut is quoted as saying: "The thing which gives me the courage to keep going is that in the cinema industry one does not feel isolated. Solitude is one of the greatest problems facing other artists such as abstract painters and musicians."
- Paris, 31 January: Opening of Louis Malle's latest film Vie privée (A Very Private Life) co-starring Marcello Mastroianni and Brigitte Bardot. Critics have not failed to notice the similarity between Malle's tragic heroine and the tribulations suffered in real like by Bardot.
- Paris, 5 February: The Empire cinema has reopened under the name Empire-Abel Gance, with a Cinerama film La Grande recontre. Special homage was paid to Abel Gance's inventive genius during the opening speech.
- Paris, 5 February: Roger Vadim is shooting the first scenes for his new film Le Repos du guerrier (Love on a Pillow) in the Billancourt studios. It is his fourth film with his ex-wife, Brigitte Bardot, and likely to be his last as Bardot has said she intends to retire from the screen.
- Milan, 22 February: Premiere of Boccaccio '70, a film of short vignettes, directed by Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti and Mario Monicelli. The cast is headed by Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren and Anita Ekberg.
 - Oberhausen, 28 February:
 The annual festival of short films at Oberhausen is always an exceptional event in the cinematographic calendar. This year a manifesto was presented, signed by 26 young German filmmakers. They are concerned about the evolution of their cinema and condemn its stultifying conformity, typified by the Sissi series and Heimatfilme (rural films). Like the "angry young generation" of the British Free Cinema, and those of the French New Wave, Herbert Vasely, Alexander Kluge and others are trying to make themselves heard. Their ambition is to create a new German cinema of full-length films as interesting as the shorts shown here. This generation of directors has already presented many of its short films to acclaim at other international festivals. They now wish to bring this "new cinematographic language" into features and are willing to take economic risks. Vesely's Das Brot der frühen Jahre (Bead of Youth) is representative of this New German Cinema.
- Tunis, 2 March: The Tunisian Federation of ciné-clubs, which was created in 1950, has at last received official recognition. It now has the enviable status of a National Cultural Society.
- Paris, 7 March: Release of Cartouche, directed by Philippe de Broca, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale.
- Sicily, 14 March: Burt Lancaster has hurt his leg and is unable to dance with Claudia Cardinale for the ball scene in Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). The scene, which called for 250 extras, as well as 120 wardrobe masters, makeup artists and hairdressers, has had to be postponed. Director Luchino Visconti is apparently furious.
- New York, 20 March: The New York Times has announced that Grace Kelly, now Princess Grace of Monaco and retired from the screen, will return to star in Alfred Hitchcock's next film, Marnie.
- Rome, 1 April: On location here for Cleopatra, stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor have been seen together frequently. Despite repeated denials from their agents, their liaison is now public knowledge. The press appears to be on the side of Sybil Burton and Taylor's husband, Eddie Fisher, the wronged parties.
- Hollywood, 9 April:
 The Academy Awards ceremony this year, once again presented by Bob Hope, with the assistance of Ann-Margret, was the triumph of West Side Story, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. This film scooped ten Oscars®, including Best Picture, Best Director(s) and both Best Supporting Actor and Actress, the last two awards being handed, respectively, to George Chakiris and Rita Moreno. The Best Actor award went to Maximilian Schell for his strong performance as the defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg. Sophia Loren was voted Best Actress for Two Women, the first such award ever for a performance in a language other than English.
 - Paris, 11 April: Two hours in the life of a superstitious young nightclub singer (played by the beautiful ex-model Corrine Marchand) as she waits for the medical verdict on whether she will live or die, is the subject of the new film from Agnès Varda, Cléo de 5 à 7. The director has managed to capture Paris as seen through the eyes of the heroine, where every trivial incident takes on new significance. Part of the film's originality is that the story unfolds in real time.
- San Francisco, 11 April:
 John Ford's newest Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, explores the transformation of the frontier from wilderness to garden and the myths on which the process of civilization depends. James Stewart is Ransom Stoddart, the bookish Eastern lawyer who becomes a hero, and a senator, when he confronts and kills the brutal gunslinger of the title, played by Lee Marvin. But his belated confession that Valance was shot by John Wayne's Tom Doniphon, symbol of the Old West, is dismissed by a newspaper editor who comments, "when the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
 - Savannah, 12 April: Robert Mitchum is at his most powerfully malevolent as Max Cady, the vengeful, cigar-chomping ex-con stalking upright Georgia attorney Gregory Peck and his family in Cape Fear, directed by Britain's J. Lee Thompson. Mitchum's attentions soon move from poisoning the family dog to sexually assaulting Peck's teenage daughter Lori Martin. Finally the desperate Peck uses Martin and his wife Polly Bergen as bait in a trap he sets for Mitchum in the steamy backwaters of the Cape Fear River, which is actually in North Carolina. Nonetheless, not since The Night of the Hunter has Mitchum reveled in such rich villainy.
- Rome, 9 May: Federico Fellini has started filming Otto e mezzo (Fellini's 8½) in the Cinecittà studios, with Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale and Sandra Milo.
- Paris, 11 May:
 Two great French actors, each from a different generation, have come face to face in Henri Verneuil's film Une singe en hiver (A Monkey in Winter): Jean Gabin from the Golden Age of pre-war French cinéma and Jean-Paul Belmondo, the darling of the New Wave. In the course of making the film, set in Normandy in 1944, the two stars struck up a friendship. At one stage, Gabin told Belmondo, "Kid, you're me at 20."
 - London, 21 May: In A Kind of Loving, director John Schlesinger focuses on the kind of smoky, northern industrial environment that is rapidly becoming a cliché in British cinema. The film stars Alan Bates and June Ritchie as a young couple forced to marry when Ritchie becomes pregnant. Schlesinger explores the landscape of their lives, both interior and exterior, with some sensitivity, but the feeling remains that they are representatives of a particular kind of social thinking rathen than living, breathing people.
- Peking, 22 May:
 The magazine Popular Cinema has just created the One Hundred Flower prize, chosen by a poll of its readers. The first winner is Hong se niang zi jun (Detachment of Women), directed by Jin Xie last year. Born in 1923, the director is already well-known, with Nu lan wu hao (Woman Basketball Player No. 5) being among his successes. His latest film takes place on the island of Hainan in 1930, where the Communist guerillas consist solely of women. The stirring story, along with the engaging presence of Xijuan Zhu, has enchanted the public.
- Paris, 25 May: The press has been showing a great deal of interest in the Tahitian liaison between Martine Carol and a young soldier named Jean-Marie Dallet, who is said to be one of Georges Pompidou's nephews.
 - Cannes, 25 May: Without taking into consideration the negative reactions of the public to both Robert Bresson's Procè de Jeanne d'Arc (The Trial of Joan of Arc) and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse (The Eclipse), the films shared the Special Jury Prize. Neither could be called crowd pleasers. Bresson's austere work was drawn from the actual transcripts of the trial of Joan, played by Florence Carrez, a non-professional actress. L'Eclisse completes Antonioni's trilogy of alienation, and dwells on the emptiness of modern life. To everybody's surprise, the Golden Palm went to O Pagador de Promessas (Keeper of Promises aka The Given Word), a Brazilian film by Anselmo Duarte.
- New York, 6 June:
 The wheelers and dealers of Washington come under the skeptical scrutiny of Otto Preminger in his new film, Advise and Consent, adapted from a novel by Allen Drury. For the task he has drawn together a superb cast: Franchot Tone as the dying President; Lew Ayers as the disarmingly youthful Vice-President who succeeds him; Henry Fonda as a presidential candidate; Walter Pidgeon as the Senate Majority Leader; and Don Murray and Charles Laughton as U.S. Senators -- the former tortured by his homosexuality and the latter in flamoyant form as a wily Southern fixer. Sadly it was Laughton's last screen performance. He died of cancer in a Hollywood hospital on 15 December last year, at the age of 63.
- Paris, 10 June: A quote from film critic Robert Benayoun in the magazine Positif: "Have you been abroad lately? There are two things other countries envy us for: De Gaulle and the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave)."
 - New York, 13 June: "How Could They Make a Movie of Lolita?" the ads for Stanley Kubrick's latest film demand. Well, the answer must be, they have -- up to a point. A significant difference between Vladimir Nabokov's screenplay and his bestselling novel is that the age of the nymphet in the book has been raised into the teens to make it more acceptable to movie audiences, thereby changing Humbert Humbert's "perverse passion" into something less shocking. This alteration, and the reduction of the American landscape's importance in the novel (the picture was shot in England) still does not diminish the impact of this acerbic tragi-comedy. Apart from the obvious differences between the novel and the film, the story is basically the same. Humbert Humbert (James Mason), a middle-aged professor of French literature in New Hampshire, rents a room for the summer in the house of Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), a snobbish widow whose 14-year-old daughter Lolita (Sue Lyon) he finds irresistibly attractive. He marries the mother to be closer to the daughter, and Charlotte dies in a freak accident shortly after learning the truth. Humbert takes the girl out of boarding school and on a long car trip to shield her from her mother's death, but he is dogged all the way by mysterious writer Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers). Both Mason and Sellers play their off-beat roles to perfection, and Winters touchingly and humorously suggests emotional starvation and middlebrow pretentions. Sixteen-year-old Lyon, in her first film, wonderfully catches Lolita's blend of gum-chewing vulgarity and quivering animal tenderness and sensuality.
 - Los Angeles, 6 August:
 Marilyn Monroe has been found dead in her bed this morning in her Brentwood house on the west side of Los Angeles. The autopsy revealed that she had succumbed to a massive dose of sleeping pills. If it was a case of suicide, then numerous reasons could be given for it: a loveless and profoundly unhappy childhood; a mentally unstable mother and an unknown father; three failed marriages; two miscarriages; a number of unfulfilled roomances; constant pressure from the press; and personal difficulties due to a loss of confidence in herself... In fact, very little had gone well for her since February 1961, after her divorce from Arthur Miller. It was then that Monroe entered a psychiatric clinic, fearful that she might suffer insanity as her mother before her.
Monroe returned to work last April to begin shooting on her 29th movie, Something's Got to Give, directed by George Cukor, and with Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse as co-stars. One of her last public appearances was at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 21 May. Dressed in a clinging, flesh-colored sequined dress, she sang "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy. Production on the film was interrupted soon after. Said to be ill, she seldom turned up on the set, forcing the director to shoot as much as he could around her. The studio (20th Century-Fox) began to look for a replacement, but Dean Martin, a friend of hers, threatened to quit the film if Monroe went. She came back for a day's shooting at his instigation, but then disappeared again. This time Fox started proceedings against the star, reclaiming $750,000 from her for breach of contract. Monroe sent a letter to the film team that read, "Please believe me. I did not do it without good cause. I would have loved to have worked with you." Just three months later, she was dead, leaving no message that would explain her final gesture. "Marilyn was the most frightened little girl," Joseph L. Mankiewicz had once commented. "And yet scared as she was, she had this strange effect when she was photographed... In fact, the camera loved her."
- Paris, 13 August: Philippe Noiret has married Monique Chaumette. Both of them had worked at the National Theatre.
- Hollywood, 29 August:
 Darryl F. Zanuck has just been appointed as the new president of 20th Century-Fox. This comes six years after he relinquished his post as that studio's vice-president in charge of production in favor of a new career as an independent producer in Europe, producing such films as The Sun Also Rises (1957), Roots of Heaven (1958) and completed this year, The Longest Day. Unfortunately, Fox performed badly under departing president Spyros P. Skouras, and has recorded huge loses during the past three years, only managing to survive by selling off 260 acres of its back lot. The situation has become increasingly desperate during the past year, with the costs of Cleopatra climbing over $30 million to make it by far the most expensive movie ever made; while the Marilyn Monroe film, Something's Got to Give, abandoned midway through production, involved around $2 million in cost write-offs. On his taking over, Zanuck immediately shut down the studio and dismissed most employees in order to cut costs and gain some breathing space before the release of both The Longest Day and Cleopatra, films that should replenish the company coffers.
 - Venice, 8 September: At this year's Mostra the jury found it impossible to decide which of two films merited the Golden Lion. They resolved their problem by giving it both to Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan's Childhood) and to Valerio Zurlini's Cronaca familiare (Family Diary). The choice shows that they went for emotion rather than pyrotechnics. The Soviet film tells of the adventures of 12-year-old Ivan, whose family is wiped out by the Nazis. Hell-bent on revenge, he joins a detachment of Partisans who are able to use his size and agility for intelligence purposes. It concludes that "childhood is made to love, and not for combat." The 30-year-old Tarkovsky's feature debut shows a rich pictorial sense, especially in the lyrical black-and-white landscapes.
 Also beautiful to look at is Cronaca familiare, with Zurlini using color to evoke the Impressionists. It is a melacholy tale of two brothers, newspaperman Enrico (Marcello Mastroianni) and Lorenzo (Jacques Perrin), separated in childhood, but later brought together in a close and loving relationship. The film takes the form of flashback reminiscences of Enrico following the death of the younger Lorenzo from an incurable disease.
- Los Angeles, 18 September: The Music Corporation of America (MCA) has taken over the Decca record company, the major shareholder in Universal.
- Rome, 22 September: At the premiere of Mama Roma, in the Quattro Fontane Cinema, the film's director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, was attacked by members of fascist groups who had turned up to protest against the film.
 - Paris, 22 September: After winning the Special Jury Prize at the recent Venice Film Festival, Jean-Luc Godard's fourth feature, Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live), has just opened in Paris. It is the story (told in 12 chapters) of Nana S., a girl from the provinces, who gets a badly-paid job in a record shop in Paris. Then when she finds herself unable to pay the rent, she is gradually initiated into prostitution, finally becoming experienced. Using interview techniques, direct sound, long takes, texts, quotations and statistics, Godard has given this probing and dazzling examination of prostitution a documentary tone. His screenplay was inspired by a survey carried out by Marcel Sacotte on the current state of prostitution in France, extracts of which are read out by Saddy Rebot, who plays a pimp. The philosopher Brice Parain also makes an appearance in which he reflects on the heroine's actions. Above all, however, the film is a passionate cinematic love letter to the director's wife Anna Karina, who plays Nana. Close-ups of her remind one of Louise Brooks and Lillian Gish, as well as Maria Falconetti, the latter tearfully watched by Karina in Carl Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928). The star has become, more than ever, Godard's muse.
- London, 1 October:
 The current Cuban missle crisis has provided a real-life backdrop to the screen debut of Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond in Dr. No, produced by Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli. Sean Connery takes the part of agent 007, licensed to kill. His combination of physical grace, classless Scots burr and hint of sadism fleshes out the perfect fantasy spy, thwarting the eponymous villain's dreams of world domination and wryly watching Ursula Andress' Honey Rider rise glistening from the sea.
 - Paris, 10 October: Producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who for several years has been operating as an independent producer in France, has become a five-star general for The Longest Day, fighting the Normandy invasion all over again with a budget of $10 million, 50 international stars, 10,000 extras, 48 technical advisors and dozens of locations. No black-and-white movie has ever cost as much. Three directors were assigned to the picture -- Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton and Bernhard Wicki -- but there was never any doubt about who was in charge. Darting from location to location in a helicopter, the cigar-chewing Zanuck declared, "This is my picture. When one wants to take the credit for something one must also take the responsibility. I don't mind hard work. There is plenty of compensation in the pride one can feel when it's all over." These are the words of a producer who had not had too much success lately as an independent. Carried along with Zanuck in this great executive assault on the events of 6 June 1944 are John Wayne, Rod Steiger, Robert Ryan, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Eddie Albert, Curd Jürgens, Red Buttons, Sean Connery, Peter Lawford, Gert Frobe, Robert Wagner, Sal Mineo, Alexander Knox, Richard Beymer, Richard Todd and a host of others. It must all seem very familiar to Todd who, as a paratrooper, actually took part in Overlord. The film has been adapted by Cornelius Ryan from his best-selling book, and looks at the titanic events of D-Day from nearly every viewpoint, including that of the Germans. And a healthy measure of authenticity has been achieved by the decision to allow the characters to speak in the own languages, with subtitles. The result receives its world premiere today. Zanuck has succeeded in his own longest day, a triumph of cinematic logistics.
- New York, 23 October:
 "More and more I think our society is being manipulated and controlled." These words come from director John Frankenheimer whose latest screen effort, The Manchurian Candidate, plunges into the world of brainwashing, political extremism and the murky machinations of the Cold War. Adapted by George Axelrod from Richard Condon's best-selling novel, this movie stars Laurence Harvey as a returning Korean War hero who is not all he seems. "Why do you always have to look as if your head were about to come to a point?" asks his mother Angela Lansbury. But his zombie-like behavior is understandable. Harvey was brainwashed while a prisoner of the Communists in North Korea. Now Lansbury and her husband, a rabidly McCarthyite senator, are using their own son to carry out a series of assassinations in America for their own nefarious purposes. Total disaster is averted by wartime buddy Frank Sinatra in a stunning set piece staged at a convention in Madison Square Garden. Unfazed by Frankenheimer's feverish direction, Lansbury delivers a superb performance as the most monstrous of mothers. In reality she is only three years older than her screen son, but she looks more interested in life than the pointy-headed Harvey.
 - New York, 1 November: The long-running Broadway hit musical Gypsy comes to the screen with its virtues intact, despite losing the unique Ethel Merman in favor of Rosalind Russell. The memorable score by Jule Styne, with lyrics to match from Stephen Sondheim and a great libretto, lights up this enthralling real-life tale that charts the childhood, adolescence and subsequent career of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Natalie Wood excels in the role, as does Russell playing Rose, Gypsy's brash, domineering show-biz mom, at the center of things.
- London, 1 November: The dramatic possibilities of Cinerama are showcased in How the West Was Won, an episodic history of the opening up of the American frontier directed by Henry Hathaway, John Ford and George Marshall. Richard Thorpe also worked as an uncredited director the the transitional historical segments. This film opens with the exploits of mountain man James Stewart and closes with a train robbery. Along the way the three-camera system, projected on to a huge screen, provides some breathtakingly spectacular action that includes a buffalo stampede, shooting the rapids and an Indian attack on a wagon train.
Producer Bernard Smith has assembled an all-star cast for this epic Western fresco: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Brigid Bazien, Walter Brennan, David Brian, Andy Devine, Raymond Massey, Agnes Moorehead, Harry Morgan, and Thelma Ritter, along with Stewart, head the legion of principals, while Spencer Tracy supplies the narration.
Example of how the four projected elements (sound track and three images) are combined to produce breathtaking panoramas.
(Images from the American Widescreen Museum.)
 - New York, 6 November: Director Robert Aldrich has given Bette Davis and Joan Crawford a bizarre new lease on life in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, an extraordinary extension of the sado-masochistic elements that have been running through their film careers, in which they play two elderly sisters trapped in the past. Davis was the child star of the title until Crawford became a leading lady and elbowed her out of the spotlight. Now the studio lights have been switched off for both of them, and they occupy a shuttered mansion, Crawford in a wheelchair, drink-sodden Davis gleefully serving her rats for dinner. There's heavyweight support from 300-pound newcomer Victor Buono and Aldrich works all the organ stops on this bit of sub-Gothic horror. It's ironic that rivals Crawford and Davis should join forces at Warners, scene many of their 1940s triumphs.
- New York, 9 November:
 Marlon Brando has made a spirited but wayward attempt to reinvent an English version of Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty. In the 1935 film, Gable and Charles Laughton were the mutinous Fletcher Christian and the martinet Captain Bligh; now Brando co-stars with Trevor Howard and a replica of the original Bounty which gobbled up a sizeable chunk of the $19.5 million budget. Lewis Milestone directs this remake.
- Paris, 20 November: After three years of married life, Brigitte Bardot is divorcing Jacques Charrier. The couple's problems have been exacerbated by Bardot's infatuation with Sammy Frey, her co-star in Henri-Georges Clouzot's La Verité. Charrier has been given the custody of their two-year-old son Nicholas, as Bardot, who recently attempted suicide, feels incapable of taking on the responsibility.
- Tokyo, 20 November: Yasujiro Ozu's latest film Samma no aji (An Autumn Afternoon) has opened in the capital.
- Paris, 10 December: Issue no. 130 of Cahiers du Cinéma is a special number devoted to the New Wave, and includes a long interview with Jean-Luc Godard. According to the filmmaker: "The sincerity of the Nouvelle Vague is essentially that it deals intelligently with things it knows about, rather than speaking badly of things it knows nothing about."
 - Hollywood, 13 December: Among the many biopics that have come out of Hollywood over the years, the latest one, John Huston's Freud, is one of the most successful. Originally, the director had asked Jean-Paul Sartre to write the screenplay, but the French philosopher and writer delivered a script that would have entailed a film of 16 hours of running time. Though Huston found it unusable, he went to work on it with screenwriter Charles Kaufman and producer Wolfgang Reinhardt, picking out some of Sartre's better ideas. The end result is a fascinating portrait of the father of psychoanalysis, seen from inside the profession, mixing real biographical elements with fictional ones. The picture begins with the 30-year-old Freud taking a leave of absence from his work in the General Hospital in Vienna to delve deeper into the causes of hysteria. His work with several patients, especially a woman with a father fixation, prompts him to begin writing his theories, which are derided by his peers. Montgomery Clift, though miscast in the title role, is able to suggest a world of meaning in his soulful eyes as he stumbles to formulate the Œdipus complex. Curiously enough, during the shooting, he had an operation to remove cataracts from both his eyes. He was also suffering from a thyroid problem, and had difficulty remembering his lines. Much of Freud was filmed in England, and Huston, with photographer Douglas Slocombe, has evoked the texture of some of the famous paintings of the period.
- New York, 16 December:
 Director David Lean has exchanged the steamy jungles of Ceylon, where he filmed The Bridge on the River Kwai, for the shimmering empty spaces of the Jordanian desert, where the subject of his latest picture fought a legendary guerrilla campaign in the First World War. In Lawrence of Arabia, Lean and producer Sam Spiegel have mounted an epic examination of the ambiguous war hero and writer T. E. Lawrence that is bound to spark off a controversy. In the title role Lean has cast a relatively unknown actor, 30-year-old Irish-born Peter O'Toole, whose blond hair and staring pale blue eyes give his interpretation of the compromised hero an unnnerving intensity. Here, Lean orchestrates the expansive action in leisurely style, and makes a nod in the direction of the Lawrence enigma, hinting at the repressed homosexual and sado-masochistic tendencies that lay under the surface of the warrior-scholar. The $15 million picture, which has been three years in the making, also boasts a strong supporting cast that includes Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal, Anthony Quinn as Auda abu Tayi, José Ferrer as a Turkish Bey, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy and Jack Hawkins as General Allenby. And, riding out of the pulsing desert haze aboard a camel, is Egyptian star Omar Sharif as Lawrence's friend Sherif Ali.
- California, 20 December: A real estate firm as bought the Hal Roach studios in Culver City. The studios were built in 1920 and innumerable short comic films, including all Laurel and Hardy's early work, were made there.
 - Los Angeles, 25 December: Critics have long contrasted Gregory Peck's exceptional good looks with his unexceptional acting talent. Now he has silenced them with his persuasive performance as the liberal Southern lawyer Atticus Finch in Robert Mulligan's To Kill a Mockingbird, adapted from Harper Lee's novel by Horton Foote. His low-key personality is ideally suited to the part of the soft-spoken Alabama attorney who has to defend black man Brock Peters on a rape charge, while bringing up two children (Phillip Alford as Jem and Mary Badham as Scout, who narrates the story as an adult, voiced by an uncredited Kim Stanley) on his own and patiently trying to give them an insight into the proceedings. It's a performance of quiet conviction and inner strength, well balanced by Peters' measured dignity, which culminates in a long and superbly handled series of courtroom scenes.
- Los Angeles, 26 December:
 Hot on the heels of Christmas cheer comes a harrowing reminder of the destruction that can be caused by alcohol and mutual dependency. The ironically titled Days of Wine and Roses follows a PR man whose drinking gets out of control. By way of being supportive, his wife joins him in his binges but, sadly, she becomes a hopeless alcoholic. This thought-provoking movie, directed by Blake Edwards, is a little uneasy in tone, veering between slick comedy, sentimentality and impending doom, but it grips the attention throughout. Above all, it confirms Jack Lemmon as one of the most impressively versatile and convincing of America's actors, and Lee Remick as an attractive and gifted co-star.
- New York, 26 December: Release of Frank Perry's David and Lisa, an emotional story of a young man in a mental hospital for teens who begins to understand his psychosis in the environment of others with mental and emotional problems. He finds intimacy with Lisa, a young woman suffering from schizophrenia. Eleanor Perry adapted Theodore Isaac Rubin's novel to the screen. Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin co-star in the title roles, with Howard Da Silva supporting as Dr. Swinford.
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7 July - New York City, 
19 April - Los Angeles,