The Sound of Music (1965) - 26 mistakes

Revealing: In the scene where Captain von Trapp takes a Nazi flag and tears it in two pieces you can see him searching for the correct place to tear. If you look closely you will see that a small incision has been made already so it tears more easily.

Continuity: In the scene in which Maria and the children are in a carriage singing Do-Re-Mi around Salzburg, at one point (when she is sitting facing the kids) she passes a shop that is painted in a very distinct color and with a distinct sign (it begins with an F: Frachts?), and a few seconds later, as she turns around to sit forward in the carriage, they pass the same store.

Revealing: When Gretl runs up to Uncle Max saying, "Can we really keep the puppet show, Uncle Max?", you can see Marta in the background begin her cue too soon as she starts to run up to Uncle Max in the middle of Gretl's line, but quickly stops herself. Then after Gretl finishes her line, Marta carries on and runs up to Uncle Max with the rest of the children and says her line.

Continuity: Nicholas Hammond (Friedrich) was not a natural blond. The first scene to be shot involving him was the "My Favourite Things" scene and you can see that his hair is pale auburn. After this scene was shot, the directors thought that he would look better if his hair were lighter, so they applied an early form of bleaching agent to his hair. In scenes which were shot after this (notably the children's first entrance to meet Maria which occurs before the "Favourite Things" scene) his hair is very, VERY blond, almost white. In fact, if you scrutinise his hair closely throughout the film, it is a different colour in practically every scene, depending on when the scene was shot and how much of the bleaching agent had been applied.

Audio problem: During the bedroom storm scene singing "My Favorite Things", you can see Marta sitting next to Frauline Maria and she gets wrapped up in the moment of Maria singing and mouthes "...feel so bad" and she's not supposed to be singing.

Continuity: Part way through the "Do-Re-Mi" sequence, when Maria and the children are walking down the steps overlooking Salzburg, the sun changes direction. At first it's behind them, so their faces are in the shade. Then suddenly the light is in front of them, and their shadows have changed direction too.

Continuity: Christopher Plummer throws down the drape the kids used for clothing on the ground. Then he walks away and there's a clear shot of the ground and the drape has vanished.

Continuity: Just before the Captain is about to sing Eidelweiss to the children, Max, Maria and the Baroness, the Baroness says to Max "Well why didn't you tell me, I could have brought along my harmonica." She has a glass of champagne in her hand and is about to take a sip but the camera cuts back to the Captain starting to sing and the glass is back resting in her hand.

Continuity: During the Folk Festival, near the end of Do-Re-Mi, while they are singing the "with jams" Gretel is in the front row with Kurt directly behind her, but when it zooms out, Kurt is further along and Gretel is between Louisa and Kurt.

Factual error: When the Von Trapp family is hiding in the Abbey to avoid the Nazis, they are hiding behind some headstones. In reality, these headstones are flush against the wall and no one would be able to fit behind them.

Continuity: After "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" a nun is shown walking Maria to Mother Abess's office. She says, "You may go in now, Maria", places her hand on Maria's shoulder, and then walks away. In the next shot that's viewing them from inside the office, the nun is seen repeating the same action.

Continuity: In the scene right before "Edelweiss", the Captain is asked by the children and Maria to play something on the guitar. The Captain is holding a glass in his right hand and then proceeds to raise his left hand in a negative gesture. The shot changes, and the glass is now in his left hand- with his right hand raised to gesture.

Continuity: After the boat overturns on the lake, and Maria is standing on the terrace arguing with the Captain, her wet hair style changes several times.

Continuity: During "Do-Re-Mi" Maria's hair is blowing in the wind in the long shots but is perfectly combed in the closeups.

Audio problem: During the song "The Lonely Goatherd," Maria sings, "Men drinking beer with the foam afloat," Gretl blows foam from the cups into Maria's face, and she coughs. You can see that Julie Andrew's mouth is not at all in sync with the coughing on the recording.

Continuity: When the Captain is asked to allow the children to sing in the festival by Max, he protests. He crosses to a table and says "Max." and picks up a glass. The shot changes, he says "My children do not sing in public", and there is now a bottle in his hand.

Continuity: In the scene right before the song "Sixteen Going On Seventeen", sung by Liesl and Maria, Liesl looks down and says a line ending with "...and he stops loving you." and then looks up. The shot from behind shows her looking up again.

Continuity: When the children are singing for the Baroness, the Captain joins them and enters the room. In this wide shot, we see Liesl only begin to put down the guitar. In the close up shot of the children, however, the guitar is almost all the way down.

Continuity: Maria goes to see Mother Abbess after they sing the song, when Maria enters the room the chair is at the end of the desk, but when Mother Abbess tells her to sit, it is clearly in the middle.

Continuity: At the party Captain von Trapp puts on for the baroness, there is a scene where the guests are being greeted by Captain von Trapp and the Baroness inside the doorway of the house. When Heir Zeller is greeted and he looks ahead you can see a lady with brown hair in a pale blue dress being greeted in the background and then looking over her left shoulder. It then cuts to a scene where Heir Zeller has moved further into the house away from Captain von Trapp and the Baroness, and you can see she is greeted a second time and again looks over her left shoulder.

Other: At the end of the Do-Re-Mi number, as Maria and the children are going up the stairs at the end of the song, Kurt still has his mouth open, even though the song has finished.

Continuity: When Maria leaves the Abbey to go to the Von Trapps, she walks for a ways, then takes what appears to be a rather long bus ride. This shows a fair amount of distance between the Von Trapps' house and the Abbey. Yet, when Maria snuck out to return to the Abbey during the party, it was night, and she had no ride waiting. Later, after the Captain tells the children he will marry the Baroness, they walk to and from the Abbey in an unsuccessful attempt to see Maria, and in an apparently short amount of time. From the initial bus ride, the Abbey was simply too far away for those walks to be believable.

Continuity: In the Do-Re-Mi scene, when the children and Maria are running back and forth on the steps at the very end of the scene, when it is about to end, Kurt doesn't reach the top step, and after the song has ended, you see him stepping up to join everyone else.

Continuity: In the first scene where Maria is singing "The Sound of Music" there are two different camera shots; in the long shot the grass is a yellowy colour and in the close up the grass is suddenly green. (This has been fixed on the 40th anniversary DVD.)

Continuity: After Liesel comes into Maria's room and Maria goes to look out the window, you can see the top of the ladder Liesel climbed up. In the next shot the ladder is gone.

Factual error: The von Trapp family's eating habits do not match the time and place. E.g. they cut up all of the meat on the plate into bitesize pieces, then put down the knife, take the fork in the right hand and continue eating with only the fork. This would not have happened in an Austrian family of their rank at that time in history.