Enemy at the Gates (2001) - 26 mistakes
Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, starring Ed Harris, Joseph Fiennes, Jude Law, Rachel Weisz
Factual error: When Kruschev and Vasy go to the press meeting the Soviet National Anthem is playing in the background. The actual anthem was not written until January of 1944, a year after the Battle of Stalingrad. In addition, the song sung is the 1977 lyrics. The lyrics used in 1944 were slightly different. See http://www.skazka.no/anthems/ for more info.
Continuity: When Danilov first shows Vassili the leaflets that praise his exploits, the shot shows a leaflet coming off the printing press with four "x-ed out helmets", indicating how many German soldiers Vassili has killed. The camera follows the leaflet off the press, Danilov picks up the leaflet and hands it Vassili. The next shot shows Vassili looking at the leaflet, but now there are five x-ed out helmets.
Continuity: In the scene where Vassili is behind the chemical factory waiting for the Major to appear, the soldiers run out from under the train cars. The next shot shows the soldiers from behind, and if you look closely a horrible editing mistake was made. Some of the soldiers suddenly disappear, and then reappear.
Factual error: In one scene a Soviet T-34 tank is shown in the middle of the battlefield. This is clearly a T-34/85 model (as evidenced by the shape of its turret), which did not appear until late 1943. During Stalingrad, the Red Army was still using the older T-34/76 model, which had a smaller turret.
Revealing: In the scene where Danilov and Kruschev are in the war room when they think Zaitsev is dead, pay attention to the maps on the walls. These are modern US and British defence maps that weren't available until starting about 1960. The clue is the the numbers on the squares. These are flight altitudes clearances for jets. Also, you can see that the maps are in Roman letters. Soviet maps during WWII were in Cyrillic and they looked differently.
Continuity: When Vassili and his two friends go out to trap König by shooting telephone repairmen, their rifles are covered by hessian, when they are shooting the repairman the guns are uncovered, and when Koulikov and Vassili are on the way back and jump across the gap in the buildings their rifles are covered again. Submitted by Foff44
Continuity: As Koulikov is shot while jumping the gap we see the blood spatter created lies along the dark line above the red writing. In the next shot it shows the spatter from another angle in which we see that it is now above the dark line where it was originally. Submitted by Scrappy
Continuity: At the beginning of the film when the Russian troops are rushing headlong at the Germans, there is an obvious cut in one shot as several people shift places and one Russian just disappears. Submitted by Joel Amos Gordon
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