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Quotes

George Banks: I suggest you have this piano repaired. When I sit down to an instrument, I like to have it in tune.

Mrs. Banks: But, George, you don't play.

George Banks: Madam, that is entirely beside the point!

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Mistakes

During the first few scenes, you see Jane is missing a tooth but the tooth disappears and reappears throughout the film. See more...

Trivia

To celebrate the film's anniversary and release on DVD, there was a special screening of the film, at which Dick Van Dyke shared a humorous personal memory. On his way to the original premiere of the film, Dick Van Dyke's limousine ran out of gas not too far from the theater, so Dick himself got out and pushed the car to the red carpet. See more...

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Mary Poppins (1964) - 21 corrections

Directed by Robert Stevenson, starring David Tomlinson, Dick Van Dyke, Glynis Johns, Julie Andrews (add more)

Genres: Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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As the movie starts out, the mother is going to suffrage meetings (to fight for the right to vote), setting the film in the early to mid 1910's. When they're talking about getting a new nanny, the mother gets a modern ring binder out. [It is not a 3 ring binder she opens, but a leather folder, what looks to be one ring is a clip to hold loose papers, and there is no evidence of the other 2 rings.]
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When Bert is walking the children home, they walk through the park gates but, a minute later, you can see in the background that they are closed with no one having had time to close them. [This is incorrect. Those are different gates that are being referred to on Bert's left, just before they cross the road. You can see both park gates after they cross the road and the ones they came through are still open.]
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Dick Van Dyke portrays both Bert and the elder Mr. Dawes. [Even if you can't tell while watching (pretty unlikely as you can easily see it's him), then he is listed in the credits.]
Edit Corrected by bacupboy
In the shot where the children first bring Mary up to her room, she puts her carpet bag on the table to take all of her things out of it. While she is removing all the things from the bag, you can see that Jane's dress above the table is different from her dress below the table. [The dress is not at all different, but the shots where Mary is taking large items out of her carpet bag, Jane's dress is not shadowed by the table, but is shadowed when Mary removes her shoes and smaller items, making the dress look darker. The mistake is that you can see that the children are not part of the same scene, but added in.]
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Towards the beginning of the movie, when George Banks comes home from work (clocking off at 6pm), the grandfather clock is a minute after 6pm and he sings a little ditty. Yet later in the movie, when Mr Banks is called to the bank by Mr Dawes, the route that he takes to get there is so long that there's no way he can make it to be home to "pat [the kids] on the head and send them off to bed" at 6:03 as he sings in the song. [Nowhere does it mention what time he got off work, or reveal any hint as to how long he takes to get to or from work. If it was the case that he got off work at 6:00, he would have to live next door to the bank to even be home by 6:01. A more likely scenario, is that he gets off work at 5:00, (like the banks today) and that it takes an hour to travel each way.]
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There is a close-up of Michael's hand slowly opening to reveal the tuppence during the bank song. In the shot right before this, his hand was in an entirely different position, grasping the opening on his coat. [Micheal isn't grasping his coat, he is holding the money to his chest.]
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As soon as the song Spoonful of Sugar is over, Mary Poppins gets the children's coats out of the closet. When you see the full shot, the mattress of the bed in the foreground has disappeared. It is quite evident because you can see Michael's shoes. [The bed is not actually missing, but because the comforter is folded in three, it is raised so high that it looks as if the bed it's on is actually the bed before it. It looks this way because Jane's comforter lines up with Micheal's bed because of the angle it was filmed.]
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When they get onto the roof of their house and start walking, they are shown as being a very long way away from St Paul's, much further than Mr Banks might expect to walk to work without taking a cab... [People in Britain walk more than Americans. I walk that far to get to the supermarket.]
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In the scene during "A Spoonful of Sugar," Mary Poppins has her apron on in one shot, but in the next shot of her, the apron is off. [And it stays off the rest of the scene. Since she had enough time off camera to remove it, this is not a mistake.]
Edit Corrected by Jazetopher
When Burt and the fox ride onto the horse racing track, the horses all rush past him, spinning him around. But if you look closely, when he spins around, he spins the wrong direction; he spins as if they all ran behind him when the all ran in front of him. [A racecourse is oval shaped, so Bert's horse was probabally at an angle to the left, so it's possible for him to spin counterclock-wise.]
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In the scene at the bank, twice Michael looks at his sister with a surprised and disgusted look on his face. They are the same shot. [How can you be so sure? It's not like in real life he couldn't look at his sister with the same face. People can keep the same look on their face for a long time, even if they don't intend to.]
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In the chimney sweeps' dance scene, Mary Poppins and the children are sitting on the chimney. Then they show Mary's feet tapping - in a position they could only be in if she were standing, and there is nothing behind her feet. Then they show her still sitting on the chimney. [Not necessarily. She can be sitting and still have her feet in that position, it's possible. It's also likely since, as explained in the DVD, it's Mary Poppins like to have her feet turned out when she's still.]
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When Mary Poppins is reading the childern's torn-up note to Mr. Banks, she is wearing a pair of white gloves. The next shot is a close-up and she is wearing black gloves. And then finally a room shot, where she's wearing white gloves again. [The gloves appear black due to the bright light being show through the paper to show off the torn parts. It is a dark shadow.]
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When the children have had a scare at the bank with their father, they run away and end up running into Bert, who is being a chimney sweeper. They go back to the house and it is daylight. Then the children get sucked up the chimney and it is night time. They all go for their walk on the rooftops and it is night time, but when they return and the mother arrives home it is daytime again. [When the rooftop sequence starts it is sunset and then turns into night. When everyone goes back into the house from the roof, the mother just shows up at the door, you never see the outside again until the sweepers leave and it is still night.]
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In the scene were Mary Poppins is moving in and taking the hat rack, plant, lamp, etc out of her carpet bag, when she takes out the hat stand you can visibly see the shadow of a crew member to the far right of the picture. [That's Michael's shadow.]
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At the beginning of the movie, when we first see Admiral Boom's house, we see that the Banks house right next store is also a 2 story home. However, the children's nursery is on the third floor (up 2 flights of stairs). There is no third floor. [You see later on in the movie that when they go up to the first floor there is only one door which is probably a closet and wouldn't have a window. So it wouldn't really count as a floor so there is just 2 flights of stairs up to the second floor.]
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During the clean up of the nursery scene, a group of hats, including Jane's straw hat with the brown velvet ribbon, fly into a closet and hang on hooks. Above them is a shelf with boxes. When the clean up is complete and the children and Mary Poppins are getting ready to go out, Jane retrieves the same hat, now on the shelf instead of the hooks, and the boxes that were on the shelf are gone. [When Jane cleans up the hats, the hat with the brown ribbon has a round top and the hats are placed in a closet that has a wall on the right side making it seem like there is space between the corner of the wall and the closet, when Jane takes out the hat, its not the same hat as the first, the hat has a flat top with a red burgendy kind of color ribbon and the closet is placed at the corner of the room.]
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The "Spoonful of Sugar" sequence ends with Michael trapped in a closet. However, when Mary tells the children to get ready for a walk, he has magically got out of the closet he was trapped in, and is standing next to Jane and comes over to get his coat. [When the "Spoonful of Sugar" finally plays out and Mary says 'Are we quite finished' that was the end of the magic. There is a glimpse of the night-table cabinet doors opening and closing for a final hurrah, more than enough time for Michael to get out of the now non-magical closet.]
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When Bert is dancing with the penguins you can tell that he didn't just pull his pants down, they were sewn together, there is a vast difference in the distance between the waist and inseam in the two shots. But in the shot when he 'pulls them back up' you can still tell they're sewn together until when he runs to the other side of the table and his pants are back to normal. This isn't because of Bert's 'magic', just poor continuity. [Oh come now. This is a children's movie, have an imagination, of course it's because of Bert's magic.]
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When Mary Poppins first meets the children at the top of the stairs, you see the children with both mouths open. The camera then zooms in and Jane's mouth is closed. [This entry is incorrect. In the movie Mary Poppins the children are well brought up kids in London. Jane has closed her mouth at this point in order to not be rude. Michael who still has his mouth open is the prompt for Mary's next line. "close you mouth please Michael we are not a codfish".]
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