- Prague, 2 January:
 Jirí Trnka, Czechoslovakia's great master of puppet films, died two days ago at the age of 57. He had been ill for some years, but he told his friends, "I want to stay alive in order to work." Born in Pilsen in 1912, Trnka, a graduate of the School of Arts and Crafts in Prague, created a puppet theater in 1936, which was disbanded at the outbreak of World War II. During the war, he designed stage sets and illustrated children's books. In 1945, he set up an animation unit at the Prague film studio, calling it Trick Brothers. It specialized in puppet animation as well as cartoons. Some of Trnka's imaginative features included Sen noci svatojanske (A Midsummer Night's Dream,1959), shot in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope. Earlier films were Cisaruv slavík (The Emperor's Nightingale, 1948), Arie prerie (Song of the Prairie, 1949), Kybernetická babicka (Cybernetic Grandma,1962) and Dobrý voják Svejk (The Good Soldier Schweik,1955), adapted from the Czech comic novel. His final film, Ruka (The Hand, 1965), stands as his artistic and political testament.
 - Paris, 9 January: The Louis Delluc Prize has been awarded this year to Les Choses de la vie (The Things of Life), which stars Romy Schneider and Michel Piccoli. It is directed by Claude Sautet, who is something of a discovery even though this is his fourth feature. Bonjour sourire (1955), Classe tous risques (The Big Risk, 1960) and L'Arme à gauche (Guns of the Dictator, 1965) were effective crime dramas that did not receive the attention from the public that they deserved. However, his new film, which moves into different territory, has hit the jackpot. It is a sharply observed study of a mid-life crisis, beginning with a sequence that alerts the audience to the fact that the hero (Piccoli) is to die in a car crash. In flashback we learn that he is separated from his wife (Lea Massari), and is having an affair. But he still retains an attachment to, and interest in, his wife, his son, his friends, the places he has known -- in short the "things of life," and consequently finds it difficult to make a commitment to his mistress. The latter is played by the lovely Schneider, who has now matured into a fine actress.
- New York, 4 February:
 Premiere of Patton, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. George C. Scott's powerful performance carries this film from a so-so war film to a well-done chronicle of the ultimate fighting man. The other performances in the film are not nearly as convincing, but they really don't need to be -- because this is a film about Patton from beginning to end. His perspective is always first rather than the war at hand. The complexity of this man only grazes the surface but Scott's near perfect performance shows some of the perculiaraties of a deeply religious man who uses God's name in vain without flinching. His belief in reincarnation also rubs against the Bible which he so confidently proclaims that he reads every day to a group of priests in one of his most telling scenes. For such a great man, his career ends without much fanfair, but he will be remembered for a long time because of what he did. This film is certain to be recorded as one of the better historical film biographies, alongside those of Louis Pasteur and Vincent van Gogh.
 - Hollywood, 10 February: The problems experienced by many of the leading Hollywood studios during the late 1960s have worsened over the past year, forcing companies to cut back on production plans, cancel some projects outright, and dismiss large numbers of employees. According to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, "The film studios are continuing to trim staffs as they liquidate inventories estimated at $400 million. MCA (which owns Universal) and 20th (Fox) hit new lows for the year on the New York Stock Exchange." The report further describes the high level of redundancy at four companies in particular -- Universal, MGM, Fox and Warners -- where revenues and profits have fallen dramatically. Only Universal has stayed in the black, while the other three are awash in red ink, with combined total losses between them coming to $100 million, and no end yet in sight, despite the management shake-ups that have taken place. Financier Kirk Kerkorian has taken over at MGM, and Kinney National has recently acquired a controlling interest in Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. And it doesn't look as if the Zanucks (president Darryl and his son, production chief Richard) can survive much longer at Fox. The continuing fall in movie attendance is a problem, and the studios have invested large sums of money in expensive productions that have flopped. The list of high-cost lossmakers includes Camelot (Warners, 1967), Paint Your Wagon (Paramount, 1969) and, from UA, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and Battle of Britain (1969). But most disastrous of all has been the recent run of flops at Fox including Doctor Dolittle (1967), Staircase and Hello, Dolly! (both 1969). And the studio's nightmare is not over yet. Much is riding on two new productions, the $10 million The Only Game in Town and the $25 million Tora! Tora! Tora! The outlook for the Zanucks is distinctly bleak.
- New York, 11 February: The trade journal Variety has revealed that Disney's Song of the South (1946) was withdrawn from circulation in 1958 due to the racist attitudes reflected in the roles played by Negroes.
- New Jersey, 17 February: Frank Sinatra has been forced to give evidence at a hearing of the State of New Jersey's Commission of Inquiry into Organized Crime. Sinatra, who was questioned about his association with well-known members of the Mafia, has denied any contact with the organization. He insists that a misunderstanding arose due to shares he once held in a Las Vegas casino. The actor has been exonerated.
- Paris, 26 February:
 After the expensive production of La Sirène du Mississipi (Mississippi Mermaid, 1969), shot in CinemaScope and color with two big-name French stars, Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo, the director François Truffaut has returned to a far more austere and modest style. His film L'Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child) is set in 1798 and tells the true story of the discovery of a naked boy, who resembles and behaves like a wild beast, in the woods in central France. He is sent to the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Paris, where Dr. Jean Itard struggles to make him walk upright, wear clothes and teach him to speak. This detached, but still moving, film has a remarkable performance from Jean-Pierre Cargol, of gypsy parentage, in the title role. Truffaut cast himself as the doctor so that he could direct the boy both in front of the camera and behind it. The head-to-head battle between the doctor and his patient on screen reflects that of the director and actor. It is significant that The Wild Child is dedicated to Jean-Pierre Léaud, the brilliant young lead in Truffaut's first feature, The Four Hundred Blows (1959), during which a similar relationship was formed. Constructed in the form of an academic study, the film charts each fascinating step in the boy's education, and makes an interesting comparison with The Miracle Worker (1962).
 - Paris, 27 February: Against a background of bourgeois provincialism, observed with detailed precision, Claude Chabrol's new film Le Boucher (The Butcher) is a provocative, challenging and compelling thriller. In a village in the Périgord, Popaul the local butcher (Jean Yanne), a fat and lonely ex-soldier, pays court to H&élène the schoolmistress (Stéphane Audran), beautiful, lonely and repressed. Hovering like a cloud over the village and its inhabitants is the threat posed by a killer in their midst who mutilates his victims with a knife... Tension mounts on screen and in the audience with H&élène's growing suspicion that her unsuitable suitor might be the killer, counterpointed by several Hitchcockian touches from Chabrol that add to the suspense. It's a tight, taut film, superbly acted by Yanne and Audran (supported by a cast of locals playing themselves), but what sets it above others in the genre is the subtle complexity of the central relationship. Le Boucher evokes comparison as well as horror.
- Paris, 1 March: Jacques Demy has started shooting Peau-d'ane (Donkey Skin aka The Magic Donkey), based on the tale by Charles Perrault, on location at the Château de Chambord. Shooting of this fairytale is next scheduled to move to the castles of Plessis-Bourré and Gambais.
- New York, 5 March:
 Universal producer Ross Hunter has blended group jeopardy with Grand Hotel and has come up with Airport, based on Arthur Hailey's phenomenal bestseller. The blizzard-swept runways and stormy skies above an international airport (filmed in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN) are stacked with stars going through various kinds of hell. Dean Martin is the veteran Global Airlines pilot with a marriage problem and a mixed bag of passengers, including geriatric stowaway Helen Hayes and pshychopathic Van Heflin, whose bomb is primed to blow them all to kingdom come. Battling to control mounting chaos on the ground, where a vital runway is blocked by a snowbound plane, is hard-driving airport manager Burt Lancaster. Lending a hand are security chief Lloyd Nolan and the cigar-chewing maintenance man George Kennedy, as Jacqueline Bisset, a curvaceous stewardess, mops Martin's fevered brow while the minutes to disaster tick away. Universal invested $10 million in the production, and it looks like it will be a hit.
- Paris, 9 March: The Armand Tallier prize for the best film book has been won by the Swiss film critic and historian, Freddy Buache for his work Le Cinéma italien d'Antonioni à Rosi (1969), published by The Age of Man.
 - Paris, 20 March: A recent popularity poll in France placed Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo in equal first place. Now, for the first time, they are appearing together in the same film, Borsalino. The two stars play a couple of petty crooks, who join up and rise int he underworld of 1930s Marseilles until they control all the meat supplies. Delon and Belmondo got on well while making this jaunty, tongue-in-cheek gangster movie. However, their relationship has subsequently deteriorated. As Delon was also the producer of Borsalino, his name appears twice on the billboards, much to the ire of Belmondo, who intends to sue. It is doubtful we will see them on screen together again.
- New York, 23 March: CBS held a demonstration of a color video recording and announced that the first commercial distribution of videotapes would begin next fall. Darryl F. Zanuck has declared that 20th Century-Fox intends to sell films on videotape five years after their theatrical release.
- New Jersey, 25 March: The first Jerry Lewis movie theater opened in Wayne. Lewis, who now plans only 355 theaters instead of 750, is seeking investors.
- New York, 26 March:
 For three days in August 1969, a 600-acre farm in upstate New York was invaded by half a million people who flocked to the Woodstock Festival, a feast of rock music presented on an unprecedented scale. If you didn't make it to Max Yasgur's farm, you can now get something of the flavor of this remarkable event in Michael Wadleigh's documentary account of the great gathering of the tribes of youth culture, Woodstock. With a team of 12 cameramen using 16mm film, Wadleigh shot some 120 hours of film which has been edited down to 184 minutes. There's arresting footage of the festival's once-in-a-lifetime lineup, which included Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, The Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Arlo Guthrie, Santana, Country Joe and the Fish, Ten Years After, Canned Heat, Richie Havens, Sha-Na-Na, Jefferson Airplane, John Sebastian, Janis Joplin and Sly and the Family Stone. But Wadleigh also turns the camera's eye on the rag-tag army encamped in the mud who came to watch, dance and dream the festival away amid the Purple Haze conjured up by the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
- Paris, 27 March: An article representing the views of the French "workers party," which appeared in the professional weekly Le Film français, attacked the "unhealthy nature" of today's French films: "A small group of neurotic intellectuals and film merchants show no hesitation in corrupting our nation and, in particular, our young people."
 - Los Angeles, 7 April: This year no fewer than 17 stars hosted the Oscars® ceremony. In an evening full of surprises, none of the favorites won an award. The Best Picture Oscar® went to Midnight Cowboy, which also won the Best Director award for John Schlesinger. Maggie Smith was voted Best Actress for her superb performance as the mesmerizing schoolmarm in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Thirty years after he played the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach, John Wayne received his first Academy Award, that of Best Actor for his warm performance as the boozy lawman Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Two other dark horses took the Best Supporting acting awards: Goldie Hawn for her quirky performance as the girlfriend in Cactus Flower, and Gig Young for his unctuous dance marathon MC in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
- Denver, 16 April: Jane Fonda slept outdoors and fasted for 36 hours in protest against the war in Vietnam and against John Wayne's film, The Green Berets, to the displeasure of her father, Henry Fonda.
- Paris, 29 April:
 Because he had closed his eyes to certain crimes committed by communist regimes at the time he was a member of the French Communist Party, Yves Montand has long wanted to atone for his past errors. This explains the conviction with which he threw himself into Costa-Gavras' L'Aveu (The Confession). After attacking the far Right with enormous success in Z (1969), the director has now turned his attention to the Czech Stalinists. Montand plays Artur London, who was arrested, imprisoned and tortured during the political purge of 1951. The true story packs a punch, especially during the interrogation scenes that lead to the false confession of the title.
 - Cannes, 16 May: Can one make a comedy today out of a situation as tragic as war? The American director Robert Altman has shown it can be done with M*A*S*H, a hilarious, iconoclastic, anti-war satire, that has won the Grand Prix at this year's Festival. After he'd directed four forgettable movies, the 45-year-old Altman was then offered M*A*S*H because "14 more acceptable directors turned it down." The film has struck a responsive chord with audiences, who see the film's Korean War setting as a reference to Vietnam. It deals with two surgeons (Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould) at a mobile army surgical hospital (the "M.A.S.H." of the title) at the Front, who spend their time chasing women and bucking authority in order to keep themselves sane. The other Festival winners were all Italian: Elio Petri's Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) (Special Jury Prize); Marcello Mastroianni in Etore Scola's Dramma della gelosia - tutti i particolari in cronaca (Drama of Jealousy); and Ottavia Piccolo in Metello.
- Lyon, 23 May: A group of 40 conservationists from the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) are working on the problems related to film preservation. High on the agenda is the necessity of raising the awareness of authorities and the public to the importance of restoring and protecting art treasures hidden away in film libraries.
- Los Angeles, 15 June: The trial of Charles Manson and five members of his "family" opened today. They stand accused of the murders of Sharon Tate and four other people on 9 August in Hollywood. They confessed to the "ritual killings" when first arrested last November.
- Los Angeles, 17 June:
 In spite of its title, Fox's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls has nothing to do with the novel by Jacqueline Susann. It's a sexploitation movie directed by "skin flick" king Russ Meyer, a World War II combat cameraman and former Playboy photographer who has made millions out of drive-in fodder like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! featuring lots of sex and violence dealt out by Amazonian women with large breasts. For years the cheerfully vulgar Meyer has been ridiculed by the Hollywood establishment as a peddler of schlock, but the huge success of his 1968 Vixen, which took in $5 million in rentals on an investment of $75,000, excited the interest of profit-hungry Fox who then let him loose as producer-director of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which he has co-scripted with film critic Roger Ebert. The result -- decidedly less raunchy than Meyer's ususal offerings -- follows the bizarre adventures of a three-girl rock group called the Carrie Nations as they go in search of fame and fortune in the cynical, scheming and, it would seem, largely bisexual music world of Los Angeles. However, Meyer's particular brand of playful perversity and sense of the surreal (absolutely anything can happen in a Meyer movie and usually does) have been smothered by the size of the budget. Low-rent genius flourishes best when operating on a shoestring.
- Paris, 20 June: Although François Truffaut denies being a "revolutionary," he has been selling La Cause du peuple (The People's Cause) on the streets, in the company of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, to uphold the cause of freedom of expression.
 - New York, 23 June: Mae West has not made a movie since 1943, although she has not wanted for offers -- she was the first on Billy Wilder's list for Sunset Boulevard (1950), but was reported to be "insulted" by the notion that she might play mad old movie star Norma Desmond. After all, West was very much alive and kicking. To prove it she has made her long-delayed comeback, at the age of 78, in Fox's version of Gore Vidal's sex-change fantasy, Myra Breckinridge, directed by former English pop singer Mike Sarne. Raquel Welch stars as Myra, who was Myron and looked like Rex Reed in a former life, but now is a woman who looks like Marlene Dietrich in Seven Sinners. West is a Hollywood agent, surrounded by studs and resembling a faintly blurred version of her old self, although her legendary drawl has survived the passing of the years. West's fee of $335,000 for 10 days' work (in addition to writing her own dialogue) was almost certainly worth every penny in publicity to Fox, but the film has emerged as a frightful farrago, stitched together with clips from old Fox movies and torpedoed by Sarne's inexperience. Inevitably, perhaps, a feud developed between its two stars. Welch was reportedly enraged by West's top billing. But West has had the last laugh. At the New York premiere she was mobbed, while the fans ignored Welch.
- Los Angeles, 24 June: Dennis Hopper has started proceedings against Peter Fonda and his Pandro Company. Hopper is asking for 3 percent of the profits of Easy Rider as payment for his contribution to the screenplay.
- New York, 24 June:
 Eighteen years after it was published, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, a black comedy set in wartime Italy, has hit the screen. At one point it looked as if it would be directed by Stanley Kubrick, but the man at the helm of this $10 million Paramount production is Mike Nichols. Alan Arkin heads a starry cast as Yossarian, the pacifist American bomber pilot trapped in the toils of military double-think contained in the title and personified by Orson Welles' monstrous General Dreedle. The picture represents a considerable technical triumph for Nichols, but he is only intermittently successful in transferring Heller's bleakly surreal vision to the screen.
- Pakistan, 10 July: Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville has been banned on all screens throughout the country.
- Paris, 5 August: The first drive-in theater in the Paris region has opened in Rungis.
- Paris, 14 August: Abel Gance has signed a contract with Claude Lelouch for a new release of his reconstructed 1927 silent film Napoléon, following an unsuccessful attempt in 1968.
- New York, 29 August: Paramount's vice-president Stanley R. Jaffe has been named president, making him, at age 30, the youngest man to hold such a position in the film industry.
- Los Angeles, 29 August: The Screen Actors Guild has promised to help Chicanos improve their image. Following a meeting between Charlton Heston, Guild president, and representatives from a group called Justice for Chicanos, the Guild resolved to review and demonstrate against films judged demeaning to Mexican-Americans, such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and El Condor (1970), which depict a handful of whites gunning down entire armies of Latin Americans.
- Paris, 29 August: Release of Candy, a film directed by the actor Christian Marquand from Buck Henry and Terry Southern's best-selling novel, with Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Ringo Starr, Charles Aznavour, James Coburn, Walter Matthau, John Astin, Elsa Martinelli and John Huston.
- Hollywood, 8 September: All the major studios except Fox have started proceedings against ABC and CBS. The television networks have started making their own films, and it is alleged that this is a contravention of the anti-trust law.
- New York, 12 September:
 Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces is a road movie built around the evasive charm of Jack Nicholson. Screenwriter Adrien Joyce has partly fashioned the character around the actor's own personality. He is Bobby Dupea, a middle-class drifter who briefly abandons oil-rigging and a sluttish girlfriend (Karen Black) to return to his middle-class musical family -- the title refers to five pieces by Chopin. In the end he forsakes his family, the pregnant Black, and the chance of happiness with Susan Anspach, for the road to Alaska. It's a poignant tale of wasted intelligence and American restlessness, and one of the few Hollywood films to explore the theme of class.
- Culver City, 5 October: MGM has started selling off its back lot by auction. The third lot of 84 acres (34 hectares) sold for $7.25 million.
 - New York, 11 October: Howard Sackler's Broadway success, The Great White Hope, comes to the screen directed by Martin Ritt and stars the original leads, James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander. The film is a thinly disguised biopic of the great black boxer Jack Johnson, here called Jefferson. He becomes a sporting hero when, in 1910, he wins the world heavyweight championship. But fame, riches and sporting honor are insufficient to keep racism at bay, and he is cruelly hounded for his relationship with his white girlfriend. Jones' towering central performance is matched by that of newcomer Alexander. Their tragedy is a plea for racial tolerance.
- Tunis, 18 October:
 Most of the African and Arab filmmakers and critics gathered at the third "Days of Carthage" Festival consider Egyptian director Youssef Chahine to be a master. So it was no surprise when loud applause greeted the announcement that the Grand Prix was to be awarded to him for the ensemble of his work. His new film, al-Ikhtiyar (The Choice), which opened the festival, is a denunciation of the failure of the intellectual elite to take on their social responsibilities. Constructed like a hall of mirrors, which reflects the hero's split personality, it is as far from commercial Egyptian cinema as one can get.
 - New York, 29 October: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is an amusing attempt by Billy Wilder, along with co-writer I. A. L. Diamond, to debunk the legend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous sleuth. Holmes (played sardonically by Robert Stephens) complains that he only wears the deerstalker and cape and smokes a pipe because the public has come to expect it of him. Happier taking cocaine and playing his violin than solving mysteries, he finds that almost every one of his conclusions are inaccurate. In two unrelated plots, he and Dr. Watson (Colin Blakely) get mixed up with the Russian Ballet and a beautiful German spy (Genevieve Page).
- Tokyo, 31 October: Release of Dodesukaden, director Akira Kurosawa's first film since 1965, with Yoshitaka Zushi and Junzaburo Ban. The film runs for four hours and is Kurosawa's first to be made in color.
- Cleveland, 9 November:
Jane Fonda has appeared in court for possession of narcotics. She was arrested on her return from Canada on 3 November. When arrested, Fonda alledgedly kicked the cop several times. She was charged with drug smuggling and disturbing the peace. Later, the pills were found to be vitamins and all charges were dropped. Some see this as another anti-government ploy by the star who has been protesting against racial prejudice in the U.S., the war in Vietnam and the invasion of Cambodia by U.S. troops.
- Paris, 12 November: All cinemas are closed today as a sign of respect to General Charles de Gaulle who died on 9 November.
- Paris, 7 December: Henri Duchemin, an employee at the Simca factory, has demanded the seizure of Claude Lelouch's film Le Voyou because one of the characters has the same name as he.
 - London, 9 December: MGM has recently been racked by crisis brought on by the abandonment of Fred Zinnemann's latest project, Man's Fate, and the spectacular box-office failure of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point. Now the studio is pinning its hopes on David Lean's film, Ryan's Daughter -- 10 months in the writing and nearly a year in the filming on location of Ireland's Dingle peninsula. Set in 1916, in the time of the Troubles, it stars Sarah Miles as the village pub owner's daughter married to dull schoolmaster Robert Mitchum and falling for British officer Christopher Jones. The film is just as plodding as the Mitchum character. A simple love story has been swollen by Lean's cinematic elephantiasis and cannot be rescued by Freddie Young's superb photography or a wonderfully wordless performance by John Mills as the village idiot.
- Los Angeles, 11 December:
 Disney releases its latest animated feature, The Aristocats, directed by Wolfgang Reitherman and featuring the voices of Phil Harris, Eva Gabor, Sterling Holloway, Scatman Crothers and Paul Winchell. In this film, Duchess and her three kittens are enjoying the high life with their devoted human mistress until the wicked butler Edgar, with his eyes on a big inheritance, decides to dope them and get them out of the picture. How can these fragile creatures cope in the unfamiliar countryside and the meaner streets of Paris? Only by meeting the irrepressible alley cat O'Malley, a rough diamond with romance in his heart. After they get a taste of the wide dangerous world, he guides them home, and Edgar gets his just desserts at the wrong end of a horse. As always, it's really the voices rather than the animation that are the heart of the Disney magic: Harris is brilliant as O'Malley, Eva Gabor as Duchess is... well... Eva Gabor; but perhaps the most memorable turns are by Pat Buttram and George Lindsay, who turn the old hounds Napoleon and Lafayette into a couple of bumbling Southern-fried rednecks. Their scenes with Edgar, and the musical numbers with Scat Cat and his cool-dude band, are classic.
 - New York, 14 December:
 If one were going to cast anyone in the title role of a movie called Little Big Man, there would not be many actors in Hollywood besides Dustin Hoffman who would come to mind. It was almost inevitable that the actor who seems to epitomize the New Hollywood should work with Arthur Penn, one of the directors most attuned to young audiences. Little Big Man continues Penn's preoccupation with the outside by seeing the Cheyenne as "ethnic" hippies who contrast favorably with white civilization. Hoffman plays Jack Crabb, a 121-year-old survivor of Custer's Last Stand, who reminisces over his long and eventful life. In order to play the old man, Hoffman had to suffer under a 14-piece latex mask, which took five hours a day to apply under the hot makeup lamps. He is brilliantly convincing as the centenarian, as well as managing to look and behave like a very young man when the movie goes into flashback. The plot follows Crabb from the time when, as a 10-year-old white orphan, he is found and adopted by the Cheyenne, and is later made a brave. Penn's film has been seen as an obvious analogy between the treatment of the Indians and the Vietnam War.
- New York, 16 December:
 "The death of a beautiful woman is always a poetic subject." So says Paramount executive Robert Evans, who encouraged writer Erich Segal to write the best-selling novel Love Story and has now brought it to the screen. It's just an old-fashioned three-handkerchief weepie, with a dash of Romeo and Juliet, in which banker's son Ryan O'Neal woos and wins Italian immigrants' daughter Ali MacGraw in the face of parental opposition, only to lose her to a tastefully fatal illness. Everyone's repeating the picture's tagline, "Love means never having to say you're sorry."
- New York, 18 December: U.S. release of Rio Lobo, the final film by the legendary director Howard Hawks. It finds him paired with longtime leading man John Wayne in a story slightly similar to their more familiar Rio Bravo (1959) and El Dorado (1966). Set at the end of the Civil War, the story finds Wayne playing a Union army colonel who recovers some stolen gold and roots out a traitor. Though a little creaky (Hawks has been making films since 1926), Rio Lobo nevertheless has his trademarks: crackling dialogue, appealing characters, and an ensemble spirit among the cast, which includes Jorge Rivero, Jennifer O'Neill and Jack Elam. Sherry Lansing makes an appearance as Amelita.
- Los Angeles, 31 December: The 10 hits of the year, including Airport, M*A*S*H, Patton and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, account for 40 percent of the distributors' total takings for 1970.
|
8 October - Cambridge, MA, 
24 February - New York City,