- London, 2 January: Opening at the Carlton Theatre of Charles Chaplin's A Countess from Hong Kong, starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. It is the second of Chaplin's films to star actors other than himself (the other was A Woman of Paris, 1923), and also the second to be made by Chaplin in Britain since his arrival from the U.S. in 1952.
- Paris, 20 January: The Studio des Ursulines movie house in the Latin quarter has re-opened after undergoing renovations.
- New York, 20 January: MGM has published a full page announcement in several papers pointing out that the value of the company's stock shares has risen by 150 percent since Robert O'Brien took over as president in January 1963.
- Monte Carlo, 6 February:
 Martine Carol has died of a heart attack, probably brought on by a mixture of alcohol and tranquilizers. Born Maryse Mourer in Biarritz on 16 May 1922, Carol made her big screen debut in 1943 in la Ferme aux loups. During the early 1950s she was the unchallenged sex symbol and box-office queen of French cinema before being finally overtaken by Brigitte Bardot. A voluptuous blonde whose ripe sensuality outweighed her modest acting talent, she was memorable in Richard Potier's Caroline chérie, René Clair's les Belles de nuit and Max Ophüls' Lola Montès. She also appeared in a number of costume spectaculars directed by her husband Christian-Jaque. However, recent attempts to revive her flagging career met with little success.
- Hollywood, 20 February: Yakima Canutt has been awarded an honorary Oscar® for his work as a stuntman and for developing safety devices to protect all stuntmen.
- Paris, 22 February: Release of Le Voleur (The Thief of Paris), directed by Louis Malle, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Geneviève Bujold, Françoise Fabian, Marie Dubois and Charles Denner.
- New York, 2 March: Judy Garland has announced her return to the screen in a film version of Jacqueline Susann's bestseller Valley of the Dolls, which is to be filmed by Mark Robson for Fox. Garland last appeared on screen as Jenny Bowman in I Could Go on Singing, released in 1963.
 - Paris, 2 March: A new art movie house on the Left Bank, the Studio Gît-le-Cœur, has been inaugurated with the first showing of Eric Rohmer's second full-length feature, La Collectionneuse (The Collector). It is the third of the director's Six Moral Tales, the first two being La Boulangère de Monceau (The Baker's Girl of Monceau) and La Carrière de Suzanne (Suzanne's Career), both short films made some four years ago. La Collectionneuse concerns an artist (Patrick Bachau) and an antiques dealer (Daniel Pommereulle) sharing a friend's villa in St. Tropez with a bikini-clad nymphet (Haydèe Politoff), who sleeps with a different boy every night. The two older men try to resist being added to her collection. "Less concerned with what people do than what is on their minds while they are doing it," in the words of the director, the film is witty, intellectual and analytical, as well as erotic. Rohmer establshed the theme of resistance to sexual temptation using the hedonistic, sun-soaked and undoubtedly alluring setting of St. Tropez to underline the dangers. Rohmer is now hoping to complete the series with Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud's), Le Genou de Claire (Claire's Knee) and L'Amour l'aprés-midi (Love in the Afternoon), titles that give some idea that the director will be continuing to explore the same territory.
- Los Angeles, 8 March: Shirley MacLaine has won the suit she brought against 20th Century-Fox in 1966. The studio has been ordered to pay her $800,000, the total of her contract for the unmade film, Bloomer Girl. The star's contract stated that she was to be paid her salary whether or not the film was made.
- Paris, 8 March:
 The two sisters, Françoise Dorléac and Catherine Deneuve, are cast as the twins Solange and Delphine in Jacques Demy's Les Demoiselles de Rochfort (The Young Girls of Rochefort). Following Lola, which was situated in Nance, and Les Parapluises de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), Demy has continued his exploration of the towns of the west coast of France, the area where he was born. The film was actually shot in Rochefort-sur-Mer, mainly in the Place Colbert, in the center of this charming town. Last year, Demy visited many towns along the coast looking for a square that could accomodate the vigorous choreography and sweeping camera movements, and his choice finally fell on Rochefort. Teams of painters, under the direction of designer Bernard Eveln, were assigned to redecorate the square, painting the facades of the houses in white, blue and pink. On 27 May last, Demy was ready to shoot this colorful CinemaScope picture, a direct homage to the great days of the MGM musical, which Gene Kelly's presence in the cast underlines. The plot tells of two girls who run a ballet school and who pine to meet their ideal man. Kelly, a concert pianist, and Jacques Perrin, a sailor on leave, are also looking for their ideal woman. Michel Legrand composed the melodious songs which Dorléac and Deneuve put over with enthusiasm, while the dancing, choreographed by Irishman Norman Maen, has been given a dynamic boost by Broadway hoofers George Chakiris and Grover Dale. As for Gene Kelly, at 55 nobody expected the kind of energetic dancing that infused On the Town, to which this film pays tribute. But he lends the film an authentic image of the big-time Hollywood musical.
 - Paris, 11 March: Le Vieil homme et l'enfant (The Two of Us), Claude Berri's first feature, is a semi-autobiographical tale very close to the director's heart. This work is a reconstruction of Berri's own childhood experience, which he describes as "a love affair between a Jew and an anti-Semite." Set during the Nazi occupation of Paris, it tells the story of Claude (Alain Cohen), an eight-year-old Jewish boy, who is sent away to stay with an elderly couple in the country. Since Pépé (Michel Simon), the old man, is a rabid anti-Semite, the boy is instructed to conceal his origins. Once there, Claude and Pépé forge a close relationship. The complex situation is handled with sensitivity and humor, seen mainly through the amused and bemused child's eyes.
- Wilmington, 15 March: Philip Levin has begun new proceedings against MGM in the Federal court in Delaware, accusing Robert O'Brien's group of buying the votes of several shareholders in order to make sure that those supporting Levin would be in the minority at the general meeting.
- San Francisco, 15 March: The Transamerica Company, an insurance and financial services giant, has made a public offer for United Artists. The company's board of directors is encouraging shareholders to accept this "friendly" offer.
- New York, 19 March:
 Orson Welles' third assault on Shakespeare is Chimes at Midnight, based on his own stage adaptation of the Falstaff scenes from both Parts of Henry IV and filmed in Spain. His own interpretation of the role of the rascally Sir John Falstaff, hobbling on a gnarled walking stick, conjures poignant images of the tragic trajectory of Welles' own career. A bravura battle scene, filmed on a shoestring in a Madrid park, and the firelight dancing on the faces of Falstaff and Shallow remind us of the waste of this great talent.
 - Los Angeles, 10 April: Only hours before the Academy Awards ceremony it was unclear whether the proceedings would be televised. The ABC network was threatened with strikes that would black out the prize-giving and leave the Academy with a financial loss of nearly a million dollars. In the end everything went ahead as planned, with Bob Hope once again acting as master of ceremonies. The most successful film was Mike Nichols' Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which won five Oscars®, including a second Best Actress award for Elizabeth Taylor and Best Supporting Actress for Sandy Dennis, who made her screen debut six years ago in Splendor in the Grass but is better known as a Tony Award-winning Broadway star. Also taking home statuettes fo their work on that picture were Haskell Wexler (cinematography), Richard Sylbert (art direction) and Irene Sharaff (costume design). The vote for Best Picture went to A Man for All Seasons, directed by Fred Zinnemann, who also won the Best Director prize.
 His star in the picture, Paul Scofield, won the Best Actor award for his portrayal of the prickly, principled martyr Sir Thomas More. Walter Matthau, master technician of mordant comedy, was given the Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for his performance as the ambulance-chasing lawyer in Billy Wilder's biting satire, The Fortune Cookie. And the Best Foreign Film award went to Claude Lelouch's huge international hit, A Man and a Woman.
At the ceremonies, both the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which are not always given, found worthy recipients. The Thalberg Award went to Alfred Hitchcock, who, though nominated five times for Best Director, has yet to receive that Oscar®. And actor Gregory Peck's many contributions to the film acting profession were recognized with the Hersholt Award.
- Lisbon, 20 April: Release of Mudar de Vida (A New Life), directed by Paulo Rocha with Isabel Ruth and Geraldo del Rei. Rocha was Jean Renoir's assistant on The Vanishing Corporal.
 - Stockholm, 24 April: The director Bo Widerberg has addressed himself to a true-life tragedy for the subject of Elvira Madigan. It tells of a tightrope artist (Pia Degermark) and a married army officer (Thommy Berggren) who fall in love, run away together and enjoy an idyllic time in the countryside, before the outrage of 19th-century society destroys them. This affecting film is exquisitely shot with a lyrical camera and well-acted (to the strains of Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 21"). One can anticipate an overseas audience for this appealing Swedish film.
- New York, 2 May:
 The winner of two Oscars® at last month's Academy Awards ceremony -- Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay -- Claude Lelouch's Un homme et une femme (A Man and a Woman) is one of the rare French pictures to make a hit in the United States. It opened modestly at a small art house in Manhattan last summer, immediately after its success at Cannes. The film did so well at the box office that it opened in other cities around the country. Variety has now devoted an entire article to the phenomenon: "According to Allied Artists, it is the most profitable film in their history, considering that it was made for a mere $100,000." A Man and a Woman has already made $2 million, a sum that could treble by the end of its showing. Its attraction seems to be its ultra-chic stars (Jean-Louis Trintignan and Anouk Aimée) and Francis Lai's catchy musical theme.
 - Brazil, 2 May: Glauber Rocha is undeniably the leader of Cinema Novo, the radical movement of Brazilian directors. Rocha, who created a sensation three years ago with Deus E o Diabo na Terra do Sol (Black God, White Devil), has now returned to similar territory with the equally lyrical Terra em Transe (Land in Anguish). The hero of the film is a journalist and poet severly beaten up by the police. On his death bed, he recalls his past and his struggle against the destructive agents of multinational companies and the Church. Rocha has here launched a vigorous attack on the "permanent state of madness" that his country seems to be living since the military coup d'etat in 1964. In his denunciation, he has called upon every cinematic weapon at his disposal -- shock montage, jump cuts and the film-within-a-film technique.
- New York, 6 May: Gloria Swanson attended the first American screening of the restored version of Queen Kelly, directed by Erich von Stroheim, of which she was the producer and star. The uncompleted film had never been distributed in the U.S., but a short version of the film had been shown in Europe in 1929.
- Los Angeles, 8 May: Robin Moore, the author of The Green Berets, which John Wayne intends to turn into a film, said in a radio interview that the Pentagon had done all in its power to prevent production of the film.
- New York 24 May: Release of Cool Hand Luke, directed by Stuart Rosenberg, starring Paul Newman.
- Los Angeles, 28 May: Dyan Cannon has been granted a divorce from Cary Grant on the grounds of "brutal and inhuman treatment." Cannon asserted that Grant would lock her up and beat her, and on two occasions forced her to take LSD. The couple married in 1965.
- Washington, DC, 5 June:
 An official announcement has confirmed the creation of the American Film Institute. The Institute aims to train young filmmakers, to stock and conserve America's film heritage and publish a catalogue listing all American-produced films. The $5 million annual budget will be funded jointly by the federal government, the MPAA, the Ford Foundation and a number of other private organizations. Headed by George Stevens Jr., the Institute has numerous filmmakers, actors and producers on its board of directors.
- London, 10 June: Queen Elizabeth II attended the premiere of the fifth James Bond film You Only Live Twice, directed by Lewis Gilbert. Sean Connery stars once again as Agent 007, and the film introduces lovely newcomer Mie Hama.
 - Hollywood, 11 June: Spencer Tracy has died at his Hollywood home shortly after completing work on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on 5 April 1900, he made his stage debut in 1922 as a robot in Karel Capek's R.U.R.. He entered films in 1930, making a couple of shorts for Vitaphone before John Ford cast him in Up the River (1930) and Fox gave him a contract. After four years at Fox, in which he gained a reputation for irascibility and heavy drinking, Tracy moved to MGM, where he established himself as a front-rank star in Fritz Lang's Fury (1936). In 1942 he was teamed for the first time with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year. Their remarkable partnership in nine subsequent films was matched by a life-long romance, although Tracy -- a Catholic -- never divorced his wife Louise Treadwell, whom he had married in 1923. Tracy was ill and exhausted throughout his final film, but, as Humphrey Bogart once said, "Spence was a natural, as if he didn't know a camera was there, or as if there had always been a camera there."
- New York, 21 June: Release of Divorce American Style, directed by Bud Yorkin, and starring Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds, Jason Robards and Jean Simmons. Once it's been established that Van Dyke and Reynolds are having marital problems (lack of communication) with a divorce impending but still love each other and that Simmons and Robards are a divorced couple who are still friends, there's nothing more to learn about them. The best lines bear no relation to reality, and the few sharply written incidents, such as a fairly amusing bit of business with Lee Grant as a prostitute, aren't enough to classify this as satire. This film has nothing in common with Divorce - Italian Style (1962) except for two words in the title, and it's so deficient of style and skill that -- whatever named -- the movie should be ashamed of itself.
 - New Orleans, 29 June:
 Within the space of two days, the film world has lost two of its stars in tragic car accidents: the French actress Françoise Dorléac and the American sex goddess Jayne Mansfield. Dorléac had been on vacation with her sister Catherine Deneuve and brother-in-law David Bailey near St. Tropez. She left two days ago to drive to Nice in order to catch a plane. But while traveling on the slippery road leading to the airport, she lost control of the car and was killed instantly. She was only 25 but had already made 15 films, working with directors René Clair, Roman Polanski, François Truffaut, Ken Russell and Jacques Demy. Today, Jayne Mansfield, her lawyer and chauffeur died on the way to New Orleans, when they ran into the back of a truck that had stopped suddenly. The star was found decapitated. Mansfield, aged 34, had made her reputation as a busty blonde in a number of comedies such as The Girl Can't Help It.
- New York, 29 June: U.S. release of Aleksandar Petrovic's 1965 Yugoslavian war drama Tri (Three), a trilogy of stories set at the beginning, middle and end of World War II in which the hero must witness the deaths of people he cares for.
- Los Angeles, 4 July: Producers Roger Corman and Burt Topper release Devil's Angels, directed by Daniel Haller, and starring John Cassavetes as the leader of a gang of Hell's Angels.
- New York, 7 July: Release of Caprice, the comedy-thriller from director Frank Tashlin, starring Doris Day and Richard Harris. Day plays an industrial designer who gets herself into a whole heap of trouble when she sells a secret cosmetics formula to a rival company in Paris.
- London, 8 July:
 Actress Vivien Leigh, forever Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, has died of tuberculosis. Born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling on 5 November 1913, she made her screen debut in 1934. In 1939 David O. Selznick chose her for the lead in Gone With the Wind, which brought fame and an Oscar®. Marriage to Laurence Olivier followed in 1940 and lasted until 1960. She won a second Oscar® in 1952 for her Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, but latterly her career had been dogged by depressive illness.
- New York, 19 July: Warner Bros. released Up the Down Staircase today. The film, adapted by Tad Mosel from Bel Kaufman's novel and directed by Robert Mulligan, stars Sandy Dennis as a rookie teacher at a New York City high school. Appearing in supporting roles are Patrick Bedford, Eileen Heckart, Ruth White, Jean Stapleton and Sorrell Booke.
 - Paris, 26 July: It was necessary for a change in the government, along with the replacement of Yvon Bourges by George Gorse as the Minister of State for Information, for the long ban on Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse to be lifted. Nevertheless, Rivette has had to make one slight compromise: the film will now be shown under the title of Suzanne Siminon, la religieuse de Diderot. This controversial work, completed in 1965, was originally banned from general release, but André Malraux permitted it to be shown at last year's Cannes Film Festival. Initially, it was a case of government officials giving in to certain religious and moral pressure groups, who had objected, without having seen the film, to its subject matter. Rivette's 140-minute color adaptation from Diderot's 18th-century novel of the travails of a young woman who is forced to enter a convent is far from prurient. In fact, it is directed with an austere detachment and an authentic sense of claustrophobia and pain.
- New York, 2 August:
 The theme of racial bigotry in a small, sweltering Mississippi town is wrapped around a murder hunt in Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night. Sophisticated Philadelphia homicide detective Sidney Poitier, who happens to be in town waiting for a train, reluctantly joins forces with the swag-bellied, manically gum-chewing red-neck local police chief Rod Steiger to solve the killing of "the most important white man in the town." In the process they strike up an uneasy but affecting relationship. The stirring them song is delivered with feeling by Ray Charles.
 - New York, 14 August: Warren Beatty has turned producer with Bonnie and Clyde, which stars Faye Dunaway and himself in the title roles. They're Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the publicity-hungry bank robbers whose gang blazed its way across the Midwest during the Depression years. Beatty canvassed François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard before securing the services of Arthur Penn as director. Penn has given his bandits a heroic quality: Dunaway's Bonnie is a touching blend of sensuality and innocence, while Beatty's impotent and shyly limpiing Clyde suggests a link between sexual satisfaction and outlaw violence. Their death, a slow-motion ballet of blood and bullets, has caused a sensation. With strong support from gang members Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard, Bonnie and Clyde switches back and forth exhilaratingly between comedy, melodrama and barbed social comment.
- Brighton, 28 August: Britain's most prolific film director Maurice Elvey has died at the age of 79. During his long directorial career, which started in 1913, Elvey made over 300 feature films, including a handful in the U.S., and numerous shorts.
- Venice, 10 September:
 Luis Buñuel continues to astonish. His latest film, Belle de jour, shot in France, is a witty and erotic exploration into the secrets of femininity. It tells of a respectable doctor's wife who spends her afternoons working in a high-class brothel with kinky clients. Catherine Deneuve, as the part-time bourgeois whore, grows more beautiful with each perversion, imagined or otherwise. The film merited the Golden Lion. Coincidentally sharing the Special Jury Prize were two films reflecting the current Western interest in Maoism: Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise and Marco Bellocchio's La Cina è vicina (China Is Near).
- Paris, 13 October: Film critic and historian Georges Sadoul has died after a long illness.
 - Los Angeles, 25 October: Warners have lavished no less than $15 million on Camelot, the screen version of Lerner and Loewe's Broadway show, which itself was adapted from the Arthurian novel by T. H. White, The Once and Future King. However, it's hard to see exactly where the money has gone, as the sets and costumes look decidedly tacky, and they are not enhanced by director Joshua Logan's vulgar use of color filters. It also remains to be seen whether the starry cast, none of whom can exactly be described as a scintillating singer, will ensure its success at the box office. Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero form the Round Table ménage à trois as King Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, and they are supported by David Hemmings as Mordred, Lawrence Naismith as Merlin and Lionel Jeffries as King Pellinore. It will require something of Merlin's wizardry for the studio to recoup its investment. There's also some very sloppy continuity work. Jeffries' King Pellinore meets King Arthur for the first time about an hour into the picture, yet about 20 minutes earlier he can be clearly spotted at Arthur's wedding.
- New York, 1 November:
 "What we've got here is a failure to communicate," says Strother Martin's prison boss to Paul Newman's uncooperative inmate in Cool Hand Luke, directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Newman takes the title role of the loner, imprisoned for decapitating parking meters, who becomes the camp hero after defeating hulking inmate George Kennedy in a fight. The contest to see if Luke can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs in one hour is guaranteed to leave moviegoers queasily eyeing their popcorn. A descendant of such 1930s prison melodramas as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Cool Hand Luke hands Newman one of his most powerful roles to date.
- London, 8 November: Roman Polanski's third English film, The Fearless Vampire Killers, with Sharon Tate, is showing in London for the first time today.
- Los Angeles, 8 December: Mike Nichols has presented his latest film, The Graduate, to the press. It stars Dustin Hoffman in his first major role -- a role that was originally offered to Robert Redford who turned it down.
 - New York, 11 December: Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner at first appears to be a daring approach to romantic comedy, being about a love affair that crosses the color bar. It is, in fact, devoid of real problems, as a group of very attractive protagonists easily sort out the temporary discomfort caused by the intended engagement of an eligible middle-class black man (Sidney Poitier) to an eligible middle-class white girl (Katharine Naughton, Katharine Hepburn's real-life niece). But despite its soft center, this is a heartwarming and entertaining movie, likely to be a huge hit because it marks the final collaboration of a legendary screen team, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. As the bewildered parents of the girl, both are superb. That Tracy died soon after filming was completed brings an extra lump to the throat.
- Paris, 19 December: A group of extremist right-wing youths vandalized the Kinopanorama Cinema, in the avenue de La-Motte-Piquet, which was screening Far from Vietnam. The manager was hurt in the attack.
- New York, 21 December:
 In the midst of a cold New York winter, there are long lines of young people outside movie theaters, full of expectations at seeing a movie that addresses them and their problems. The film is Mike Nichols' The Graduate, and it features an unlikely new young star called Dustin Hoffman. He portrays 21-year-old Ben Braddock, who feels alienated from the shallow values of his wealthy parents and friends, and is lured into a relationship with a much older friend of the family, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Hoffman is short and a bit of a nebbish. But it's the loser image that will make him a winner with the young... and the film's soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel songs won't hurt either.
 - Paris, 25 December: Jane Fonda has been directed for the third time by her husband Roger Vadim in Barbarella, based on a science fiction comic book. The film has created a storm, because Fonda does a striptease during the opening credits. Although her nudity is partially hidden, this did not stop the censors from cutting some of it before releasing the film with a certificate restricted to audiences over 18. Thus critics have unfairly accused Vadim of "anti-eroticism."
- Rome, 27 December: Actor Marcello Mastroianni has been honored with the Italian Republic's Order of Merit.
- Paris, 29 December: With the release of Week End, Jean-Luc Godard has ended a particularly prolific year, during which four of his feature films were shown to the public. Made in U.S.A. and 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her) were released in January and March respectively. Godard had shot both films simultaneously during the previous summer. With these pictures, the director's style has become more elliptical, and his attitudes more militant.
  Made in USA takes place in 1969, in an Americanized Paris, where Anna Karina is searching for a man involved in the assassination of the Algerian leader Ben Barka. This is Godard continually redefining cinematic images in a spontaneous, topical, pop art manner. Two or Three Things I Know About Her is about a housewife (Marina Vlady) who prostitutes herself one day a week to obtain the household luxuries she wants. The film, the title of which refere to Paris, is another advance towards Godard's desire to find an equivalent to "bourgeois cinema." With La Chinoise, Godard seems to have moved towards a Maoist political commitment. It concerns five young people who set up a Maoist cell to try to put their theories into revolutionary practice. (Red is the appropriately dominant color.) And a disenchantment with French society is even stronger in Week End, a devastating attack on modern life and the automobile.
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19 February - Santurce, Puerto Rico,