- London, 12 January: François Truffaut has started shooting his first film in English titled Fahrenheit 451, which stars Oskar Werner and Julie Christie.
- New York, 20 January: Otto Preminger, the director and producer, lost his case yesterday to prevent any cuts or extensive commercial interruptions during the televised showing of this film Anatomy of a Murder. Justice Arthur Klein rejected Preminger's suit, which had been closely watched by the television industry.
- Hollywood, 30 January:
 Fallen star Hedy Lamarr has been imprisoned for shoplifting. It's not the first time she has courted scandal. Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna on 9 November 1913, she was discovered by Max Reinhardt and in 1932 gained international notoriety by appearing fleetingly naked in a Czech film, Ecstasy. Her reputation went before her to London, from where she pursued a reluctant Louis B. Mayer to America aboard the Normandie. Before the liner docked in New York, she had a seven-year contract and a new name. In the early 1940s, Lamarr was a byword for Hollywood glamour; however, although frequently cast as a woman of mystery or a femme fatale, she lacked the vital spark of personality. By 1949 she was virtually a back number when Cecil B. De Mille cast her to play Victor Mature's devious mate in Samson and Delilah, about which Groucho Marx observed that he never went to see movies where the hero's breasts were bigger than the leading lady's. By 1957, she was virtually playing herself as an aging movie star in The Female Animal. The much-married Lamarr has had four husbands: screenwriter Gene Markey, actor John Loder, a Texan millionaire and her own divorce attorney. But now that she has fallen on hard times, Lamarr's private life is getting more column inches than her films.
- Los Angeles, 31 January: Barbara Rooney, actor Mickey Rooney's fifth wife, and her lover Milos Milocevic were found dead at her home. Police believe that Milocevic killed Barbara in a fit of jealousy before taking his own life.
 - London, 24 March: Michael Caine is the chirpy Cockney philanderer in Alfie, directed by Lewis Gilbert and adapted from Bill Naughton's play. He plays merry hell with the women in his life, mournful Vivien Merchant, buxom Shelley Winters and waif-like Jane Asher, but he's beginning to find the competition catching up with him. Alfie's snappy flannels and bogus regimental blazer mark him out as an old-fashioned sexual predator, but losing ground to the dandified young bucks who prowl "Swinging London." His humiliation comes at the hands of Winters, whom he finds cavorting in bed with a young musician whose guitar, like a phallic symbol, is propped up by the door. There's something of Alfie in the bespectacled Caine's background. Her was born Maurice Micklewhite in London in 1933, worked as a porter in Smithfield meat market and drifted into films after stage and television work. A long string of bits and walk-ons followed before he made his mark in Zulu (1964), struggling with his vowels as an aristocratic officer. He then proved that girls do make passes at men wearing glasses, playing Len Deighton's hangdog hero Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965). Caine's Cockney accent and good-humored bewilderment at his success are perfectly attuned to the new "classless" world promoted by Britain's media. He seems like a handsome version of the guy who pulls you a pint in the pub or sells you a pound of oranges off the barrow in a street market. And his myopia makes him the first star since Harold Lloyd to wear glasses.
- Moscow, 25 March:
 One of the most unusual and impressive Soviet films for a long time has just opened in Moscow. Tini zabutykh predkiv (Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors) is a variation on the Romeo and Juliet story set in the Carpathian mountains at the turn of the century. A young peasant falls in love with the daughter of the man responsible for the death of his father, but marries a woman who indulges in sorcery. The director, Sergei Parajanov, reveals a remarkable talent for lyrical extravagance, placing him in the grand tradition of Alexander Dovzhenko. Using radiant Sovcolor, he brings a swirling, kaleidoscopic camera style to his rural folk tale.
 But who is Parajanov? He was born Sarkis Paradjanian in Tbilisi in Georgia of Armenian parents in 1924. He was brought up in luxury, though the family went through hard times during the Stalin years. He studied music at the conservatoire at Tbilisi, before enrolling in the state film school in Moscow at the age of 22. After he graduated, he worked in Kiev, where he co-directed his first feature work, Andriesh, in 1955, noteworthy for its use of surrealistic elements. This was followed by several undistinguished comedies and melodramas in the socialist-realist style. Tini zabutykh predkiv is a striking departure from his previous work as well as from much of the postwar Soviet cinema. The intense Ukranian nationalism of the film has granted Parajanov the patronage of Pyotr Shelest, the Ukranian communist party boss.
- Hollywood, 25 March: Seymour Poe, Fox's executive vice-president, reported yesterday that up to 16 March Cleopatra, which was considered to be the disaster of the decade, had earned $38,042,000 as the distributor's share of world box-office receipts. The film, which cost $31,115,000 to produce and a fortune in lawsuits, needs to bring in $41,358,000 for Fox to break even. Poe feels confident that the film will bring in $47 million over the next five years.
- Paris, 5 April: The Film Authors Federation, the French Film Critics Association and the Writers Union for Truth are protesting about the banning of Jacques Rivette's new film, La Religieuse (The Nun).
- Sèvres, 9 April:
 Between the shooting of two films, Sophia Loren has once again married Carlo Ponti, with whom whe has been together since 17 September 1957, after a marriage in Mexico. In order not to be prosecuted for bigamy in Italy, where the producer is still considered to be married to his first wife because divorce does not exist there, Loren has taken French nationality. This second marriage, held at the town hall at Sèvres, has given the marriage a legal basis. After the ceremony, the couple were invited to dine at the Coq-Hardi restaurant at Bougival. The Italian star has just completed A Countess from Hong Kong, opposite Marlon Brando, under the direction of Charles Chaplin. She leaves in afew days for the south of Italy, where she will co-star with Omar Sharif in C'era una volta (More Than a Miracle), directed by Francisco Rosi, and produced by husband Ponti. She has decided that afterwards she will put her career on hold for a while, because, at 34 years of age, she is expecting her first child.
 - Paris, 15 April: Fifteen days after the banning of Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse (The Nun), André Malraux, the Minister of Culture, has announced that he would not oppose the showing of the film at the Cannes Festival next month. He has therefore implicitly repudiated Yvon Bourges, the Secretary of State for Information. The matter has already been long drawn out. It was in 1962 that Rivette first conceived this faithful film adaptation of Diderot's novel of 1760. But for three years the project came up against official opposition. Last September, after numerous changes were made in the screenplay, Rivette and his producer, Georges de Beauregard, began shooting with the title role going to Anna Karina. The plot concerns Suzanne Simonin, who is forced, through lack of a dowry, to enter a convent where she undergoes a great deal of suffering, including semi-starvation, beatings and lesbian attentions from the Mother Superior, and attempted rape by a priest. Even before the film was completed, and without having seen any of the rushes, the association of former nuns and the parents of students in "free" schools demanded a banning order. At the receiving end was Yvon Bourges, who went against the Censorship Commission which had authorized the film. The banning has now set public opinion alight, and an air of scandal surrounds the film. Finally, the sole beneficiary has been Diderot. For some days, copies of his novel have been selling like hot cakes.
- Hollywood, 18 April:
 At this year's Oscar® ceremony, televised in color for the first time, the Best Picture award was one of the most closely contested ever. The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago entered the competition neck and neck with 10 nominations apiece, and it was to remain a tie at the end. Five Oscars® went to David Lean's Russian epic (Best Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Original Music Score and Costume Design) but the top prizes eluded it. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was considered Best Picture, and Robert Wise gained the edge on Lean for Best Director. The Sound of Music also won Best Musical Score, Editing and Sound. When it came to the Best Actress award, two Julies were in the running: Andrews for The Sound of Music and Christie for Darling. In the event it was Julie Christie who triumphed for her portrayal of an ambitious young model in the cynical and modish milieu created by John Schlesinger for Darling. Had her rival won, she would have been the first to match a record established by Luise Rainer for two Best Actress Oscars® in succession. As it was, Julie Andrews accepted defeat gracefully, hugging her tearfully overjoyed fellow Brit. Best Supporting performers were the veteran trouper Martin Balsam for A Thousand Clowns, and second-time winner Shelley Winters as the blowzy, overbearing mother of a blind girl in A Patch of Blue. Lee Marvin surprised everyone and carried off the Best Actor statuette for his hilarious performances as the noseless killer Tim Strawn and the drunken gunslinger Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou.
 Not only has Fox's The Sound of Music carried off the Best Picture Oscar®, but with rentals topping the $70 million mark for North America alone, it has easily surpassed the recent box-office records set by MGM's Ben-Hur (1959) to become the biggest hit since Gone With the Wind (1939). Mainly filmed on location in Austria in the 70mm Todd-AO process, with a budget of $8 million, the picture has played a major role in re-establishing Fox as one of the most active Hollywood studios -- this only four years after it faced bankruptcy due to a series of flops and the escalating costs of Cleopatra. Not surprisingly, the studio intends to make more musicals, and is already planning for a follow-up picture for star and directors of The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews and Robert Wise, (Star!) while Doctor Dolittle, starring Rex Harrison, starts filming shortly.
- Paris, 22 April: Release of Jean-Luc Goddard's film Masculin-féminin, a sociological view of today's youth, with Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, and making her debut, Marléne Jobert.
- Paris, 20 May: Release of the German film Der Junge Törless (Young Torless), starring Mathieu Carriére. Volker Schlöndorff directed, and also adapted the screenplay from the work by Robert Musil.
- New York, 24 May: MGM have announced that all their surviving silents are to be transferred to non-flammable film.
- Cannes, 27 May:
 Claude Lelouch's film Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman), the Jury Prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival, has opened in Paris. It's a color supplement romance, starring Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a widow and widower who fall in love to the catchy strains of Francis Lai's maddeningly memorable theme song. Lelouch himself was a photographer for glossy magazines, and the film's sleek surface is more of a trick of the ad-man's lens than an examination of the thorny reality of loss that invades the lives of real people. The pain of the principals is smoothed over by the prettiness of Lelouch's camerawork and the luxury of their lives. This film is sure to be a huge hit.
- Rochefort-sur-Mer, 31 May: Jacques Demy has started shooting Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort), a musical comedy starring Françoise Dorléac and her sister, Catherine Deneuve.
 - Los Angeles, 22 June: Booze and self-disgust flow in torrents in the screen version of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Here, Warners have cast the world's most famous married couple, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, as one of the unhappiest ever to have tied the knot. The love-hate relationship between college professor George and his blowzy wife Martha, daughter of the college president, has been festering for years before it explodes like a boil in the faces of the young campus couple -- George Segal and Sandy Dennis -- whom they invite home. As the martinis mingle with mutual loathing, both couples find themselves staring into the abyss. Choreographing this lacerating encounter, and also making his screen debut, is Broadway director Mike Nichols, who found the film a tough assignment: "There was a very unpleasant aspect for all of us. We had to keep coming back to the same damn room, over and over, every day. And the poor Burtons had to spit at each other and hit each other for days." How different from the stars' own decorous home lives.
- Nashville, 18 July: Police have seized Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and arrested the manager of a local movie theater for contravening a municipal order that bans all entertainment of an obscene nature.
- Los Angeles, 27 July: Release of Alfred Hitchcock's new film, Torn Curtain, with Julie Andrews and Paul Newman.
- New York, 12 August: Variety has published an article stating that 62 of the 136 American films underway this year are being made overseas. Among the biggest budget films are 2001: A Space Odyssey, filmed in Great Britain, as is The Dirty Dozen, while The Sand Pebbles is being made in Taiwan.
- New York, 16 August: Jack Valenti, the recently elected president of the MPAA, has sent a confidential memo to the heads of all studios recommending that "The classification of films by the government should be avoided at all costs." He feels the film industry should have its own classification system to avoid all external censorship.
- Copenhagen, 19 August: Henning Carlsen has announced the release of his adaptation of Knut Hamsen's masterpiece titled Sult (Hunger), starring Per Oscarsson and Gunnel Lindblom.
- Venice, 10 September:
 For the Golden Lion this year, the jury of the Mostra has chosen a disturbing film that has attempted to seek out the truth of an event in recent history. Gillo Pontecorvo's La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) deals with the guerilla war for Algerian independence from the French in 1957, as seen through the eyes of the participants. Shot in the actual locations, mixing actors with those who fought in the battle, and without recourse to any newsreel footage, the film probably comes closer to the truth and the complexities of the situation than many documentaries have. Its major strength lies in its scrupulous attention to the views and problems of both sides. The film, subsidized by the Algerian government, exploits the possibilities of the Casbah's back streets, contrasted with the smart avenues of the French quarters. The winner of the Special Jury Prize was Alexander Kluge's Abschied von Gestern (Yesterday Girl), a debut feature from Germany. This tale of a completely amoral and rebellious East German girl comes as a breath of fresh air from the moribund German film industry.
 - Paris, 16 September: Director François Truffaut has ventured into color for the first time with Fahrenheit 451. Adapted from a Ray Bradbury novel, it's a science fiction parable set in a future dystopia where all books are banned. Squads of firemen incinerate those that survive (the title refers to the temperature at which they ignite). Oskar Werner is the fireman who begins to have doubts about his job, seeks solace in a secret hoard of literature and finally joins the "book people," a community of fugitives who commit classics to memory. Each one is a living book. Cameraman Nicolas Roeg's photography, particularly the close-ups of blazing books, is superb.
- New York, 20 September:
 Recognizing that many changes in mores and social standards have taken place during the 36 years since the Production Code was first established, the MPAA (The Motion Picture Association of America), headed since 1 June by Jack Valenti, has announced the formulation of a new and more flexible "code of self-regulation" to replace the more strictly enforced rules and regulations of the Hays Code. In fact, the thinking behind this new approach was suggested by a draft code published last year and follows on the controversy caused by two recent films, The Pawnbroker (1965) and this year's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. It read, in part, "Brutality, illicit sex, indecent exposure, vulgar or profane words and gestures, and offensive treatment of religions and racial or national groups, are noted as subjects for restraint, but interpretation in all cases... including nudity, is left to the discretion of the administrators." However, unlike the old Code, the wording of the new one has been left deliberately vague. In addition, it does not stress the moral obligations of filmmakers, nor does it insist on certain specific standards of moral conduct. It looks likely, therefore, that a new system of classification will be set up, designating films as "suitable of children" or "for adults only," similar to the one that is already operating in Great Britain. The code will thus meet the requirements of today's world, without the necessity for government regulation.
- Paris, 8 October: Channel One has screened ORTF's production La Prise du pouvoir par Louis XIV (The Rise of Louis XIV), directed by Roberto Rossellini from a script by Philippe Erlanger. Movie theater distribution is also planned.
- San Francisco, 12 October: Shirley Temple has resigned from the Festival selection board in protest against the planned screening of the Swedish film by Mai Zetterling, Nattlek (Night Games). The film deals with the question of incest.
- Paris, 13 October:
 The cast of René Clément's Paris brûle-t-il? (Is Paris Burning? or Brennt Paris?) reads like a Who's Who of international stars, among them Leslie Caron, Orson Welles, Gert Fröbe, Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Anthony Perkins, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Simone Signoret. And that would appear to be the problem. The distinguished director's account of the historic liberation of Paris in 1944 is a tedious and disappointing muddle. Adapted by Americans Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal from a French book, and backed by a stirring Maurice Jarre score, the film seems more concerned with parading its dozens of cameo performances than in delivering a coherent story.
- Paris, 18 October: Director Jean-Luc Godard has stated: "Until I am paid on a par with Clouzot, Fellini and Clément, I cannot consider myself to be a success."
- Stockholm, 18 October: Opening of Ingmar Bergman's film Persona, with his favorite actresses, Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson.
 - New York, 19 October: At the company's recent annual meeting, the stockholders of Paramount Pictures agreed to accept an offer of $83 per share (almost $10 over the market price) from Charles Bluhdorn's Gulf & Western Industries. This essentially means that the deal will now go ahead as expected. Paramount thus becomes the first major Hollywood film company to be owned by a corporate conglomerate. (General Tire and Rubber Co.'s purchase of RKO in 1955 hardly qualifies, since the studio was already in its death throes at the time.) Founded by Bluhdorn in 1957, the rapidly expanding Gulf & Western encompasses a variety of financial and manufacturing interests -- not to be confused with Gulf Oil, an entirely different company. This new development represents a culmination of a battle for control of Paramount that has been waging over the past year. Under attack were the policies of executive vice-president George Weltner, who had been running the company ever since longtime chairman Barney Balaban became chairman of the board. Weltner was challenged by a dissident group headed by Broadway producers Feuer and Martin and the chemicals mogul Herbert Siegel. While this group was making plans for a proxy overthrow of the management, Bluhdorn successfully stepped in.
- London, 26 October: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have founded their own production company, Taybur.
- Washington, DC, 2 November: The Justice Department has decided that the massive acquisition of Columbia shares by the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas to be illegal. American law forbids the ownership of television stations by foreign companies, and Columbia owns Screen Gems, a television distribution company.
- Paris, 5 November:
 François Truffaut's much awaited biography of Alfred Hitchcock, Le Cinéma selon Hitchcock, is at last available. The biography, which is based on a series of interviews between the two men last year, traces Hitchcock's life and career from his childhood up to his 50th film, Torn Curtain. Apart from Hitchcock's obvious sincerity, the book's greatest quality is the importance that Truffaut gives to the filmmaker's methods rather than to an analysis of the meaning of his films.
 - Sacramento, 9 November: Former movie actor Ronald Reagan, best known for Kings Row and Bedtime for Bonzo, has been elected Republican governor of California with 58 percent of the vote. Previously a Democrat, he was active in SAG (Screen Actors Guild) in the 1940s, becoming a board member and gaining his first experience of elective office as SAG president for six years. In the 1950s he worked most frequently on TV, hosting the "General Electric Theater." Reagan first registered as a Republican in 1962, supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964 before deciding to run for governor.
- Prague, 18 November:
 The just-released Ostre sledované vlaky (Closely Watched Trains) has already aroused much enthusiasm from both critics and the public. In his first feature film, 28-year-old Jiri Menzel brilliantly balances the themes of war and sexuality in a story set during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Menzel's screenplay focuses on the life of a young trainee railway guard at a remote country station, desperately trying to lose his virginity. He finally achieves his goal with a Partisan girl, who calls herself Victoria Freie (the Underground password), before he is killed because of clumsiness and excess zeal. The director wanted a happy ending, but his co-writer Bohumil Hrabal, on whose novel this film was based, persuaded him to retain the tragic conclusion. But this closely-observed, satiric, touching and humorous film is an excellent example of the Czech New Wave. For about three years now, the Czech cinema has continued to astonish with its freshness. Like Menzel, other young directors, such as Milos Forman, Vera Chytilova, Jaromil Jires and Ivan Passer, are planting the seeds of the new Czechoslovakian society, one that addresses the aspirations of the young.
- New York, 1 December: Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls has made history as the first ever "underground" film to play in a mainstream movie theater. Having mesmerized audiences since September at the 41st Street Basement Cinémathèque, the non-synchronized two-screen marathon movie today transfers to the Cinema Rendezvous for a limited run only. (A special holiday release of The Sound of Music starts on 21 December.)
- Paris, 2 December: Release of Roman Polanski's Cul-de-sac, the director's second British film after Repulsion.
- Hollywood, 7 December: Vincente Minnelli is leaving MGM after 22 years. All his films, which have ranged across a broad spectrum, were made at this studio.
 - Tunis, 11 December: The holding of the first Cinematographic Days at Carthage is an important event for Arab and African cinema, which until now has been singularly lacking in international festivals. This festival, which was founded by Tahan Cheriaa, head of the cinema section of the Ministry of Culture and Information, is an ambitious project; it is hoping to become the principal meeting place for directors from Africa and Asia. Among the many films shown as part of the competition, the winner of the Grand Prix was a Senegalese film called La Noire de... (Black Girl), directed by Ousmane Sembene. It tells the tragic story of a young Senegalese woman working as a maid for an affluent French family on the Riviera, concentrating on her isolation and her growing despair. Shot in a quasi-documentary style, influenced by the French New Wave, it is a remarkable first feature by Sembene, who is also a novelist of stature.
- Los Angeles, 15 December:
 Walter Elias Disney, one of the greatest figures in the entertainment world, has died aged 65. He suffered an acute circulatory collapse following surgery for the removal of a lung tumor. "Pleasing the public is one of the most difficult tasks, because we don't really know ourselves what we really like and what we want," he declared in 1938. He certainly knew how to please the public better than most. Born in Chicago in 1901, he began work in a commercial art studio in Kansas City, where he met Ub Iwerks, another promising young artist. In 1923, he, Iwerks, and Walt's older brother Roy set up their own company to produce the cartoon series "Oswald the Rabbit." In 1928, the character that placed Disney on the road to fame and fortune, Mickey Mouse, was born. The Disney studio then grew and grew, its "stars" like Donald Duck and Goofy becoming international favorites. In 1934, Disney had the novel idea of making an animated feature. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) proved an enormous success, and it was followed by prewar classics such as Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (also 1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942). Later on, the studio branched out into live-action features, such as Treasure Island (1950). Even though these never quite captured the perfection of the earlier animated films, Walt Disney productions continued to make a vast amount of money at the box office. Not content with films and television programs, Disney fulfilled his dream in 1955 when he opened Disneyland, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.
 - London, 18 December: The mystique of the fashion photographer in "Swinging London" has become so great that Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni has made Blow-Up, a film about one such photographer. Former child actor David Hemmings plays the trendy, cherub-faced snapper whose photograph snatched of a couple in a park may, or may not, provide proof of a murder. His desultory sleuthing is constantly disrupted, including a session with two teeny-bopper wannabe fashion models with whom he cavorts in his studio. He wanders through London's "magic village," inhabited by the boozing, drug-using beautiful people. Eventually the real and imaginary become inseparable. The body Hemmings has discovered disappears and his evidence is destroyed, with the exception of the largest "blow-up," which has become too abstract to reveal its secret. The film concludes with his becoming involved in a tennis game conducted by a troupe of mimes. Antonioni's artful meditation on the manipulation of images has caught the mood of the moment.
- Cairo, 30 December: Although the Egyptian film director Tewfik Saleh is the most cultivated of his generation, he has encountered nothing by hostility and incomprehension. After the commercial failure of his first two films, Darb al-mahabil (Madmen's Alley, 1955) and Sira' al-abtal (The Struggle of Heroes, 1962), his latest, Al-Moutamarridoune (The Rebels), has been censored. About a rebellion in a sanitarium, it is an allegory directed at the present Egyptian regime, and a thinly-veiled criticism of Nasserism. The Ministry of National Culture here imposes strict censorship on ideas it finds unpalatable.
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14 August - Cleveland, OH,