Mary Poppins (1964) - 42 mistakes

Continuity: The father tears the children's advert for a nanny up into 8 pieces, but when it comes out of the chimney it's in far more bits.

Factual error: The Robin that comes along in the movie is an American Robin, not a British Robin.

Continuity: At the beginning when Mrs. Bank is talking to Katie Nanna you can see the clock behind her and you can clearly see that the time is 6:30 when a little later it is at 6:00.

Other: In the ceiling tea party, Mary Poppins offers Bert some sugar, and when he responds that he would not like any, his Cockney accent is gone.

Revealing: An early scene with the constable and the children, Jane silently mouths along with one of Michael's lines.

Continuity: When Mr. Banks returns to the bank at night to be reprimanded, look at his torn carnation when it is placed back in his lapel. In each shot, it changes in size, shape and colour at least seven times.

Continuity: At the bank where the elder Mr. Dawes appears from the back room, he makes it as far as the edge of the step in that shot. In the next shot, he's back by the door walking again to the edge of the step.

Revealing: When all four actors are up on the rooftops, look closely at them when they all step onto the smoke platform that brings them down. All four actors are doubles.

Revealing: In the scene where Mary Poppins is removing the large plant from her carpet bag, Michael inspects the underside of the table, where the table leg casts a shadow across his face. When Mary crosses in front of him (still under the table) she does NOT cast a shadow, although she should.

Continuity: In the beginning, when Mr. Banks is calling the police and talking to his wife at the same time, the phone cord changes position between shots.

Continuity: When Uncle Albert, Bert, and the kids fall down from hovering on the ceiling, they're about to land on the chairs. But when the camera view changes, they land on the floor.

Factual error: Some of the rockets in which the captain's assistant puts into the cannon have duct/masking tape around them. Duct/masking tape wasn't invented then.

Revealing: When Mary Poppins takes the children on an outing to the park, look at the front steps when the front door opens. They are not steps but flat ground painted to look like steps.

Other: 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.

Visible crew/equipment: In the tea party on the ceiling sequence, 2 shots after Uncle Albert tells his long underwear joke, Jane does a backflip in the air. If you look closely you can see the wires that she is hanging from.

Continuity: When the kids meet Bert as a pavement artist, he draws a road with a single-arched bridge on his drawing. When they jump into the drawing, the bridge is double arched.

Revealing: During the close-up shots of the ceiling tea party, Bert and the laughing man have shadows on the wall directly behind them. However in most of the wider shots, (which have obviously been shot against a blue or green screen) the shadows are now gone.

Visible crew/equipment: At the very beginning of the movie, when Mary Poppins is sitting on the cloud, you can see the string attached to her bag just as it almost falls through the cloud.

Continuity: At the end of the film, Mary Poppins flies away from the Banks's house (supposedly within a short distance of the City of London), however, she is then shown flying towards the City on a route that would take her over the Banks's house on the way, had she not already flown over it.

Continuity: Near the end, just before "Let's Go Fly A Kite", when Mr Banks has returned home his detachable collar is detached on his left-hand side in shots from the front but not from the back of him.

Revealing: After Michael and Jane have been sucked into the chimney and then pop out, Mary Poppins pops out a short time afterward. When she does so, a dark, obvious cable can be seen supporting her.

Continuity: When Mary reads the measuring tape after measuring herself the message reads up and down (as shown to the audience), but then the camera shows Mary reading it side to side.

Continuity: When the bank executives are basically harassing Michael to give them his money, there is a shot where they are singing and marching forward and force the children to back into the wall. There is a pattern of large squares on the floor, and the men in the back are on the inside edge of the square. Then the camera goes out for a long shot so Mr. Dawes can talk about the banks of England. Now he is standing on the edge of the square. When he finishes his little speech, in the next shot they are standing back in the original position.

Continuity: In the shot where Jane and Michael are looking out the window at Mary Poppins you can see Jane's bangs are blown to the right side of her forehead because of the wind. In the next shot they're combed perfectly straight again.

Visible crew/equipment: Near the end of the movie after Mr. Banks throws the kite in the air and the camera shows the kite, you can see a white wire to the left of the kite that isn't the kite's string that pulls the kite over.

Revealing: When the penguins walk in front of the table where Mary Poppins and Bert are sitting, the table can still be seen through the penguins.

Continuity: When Mary, Bert, and the children enter the tea parlor and see Uncle Albert floating by the ceiling, the camera cuts to Bert behind Mary, then Bert in front of Mary (Bert preparing to laugh and levitate), then a shot of the children shows Bert behind Mary again. Bert cannot move this fast in a split second.

Continuity: When Mary Poppins just starts to sing "Feed the Birds", she sings "The little old bird woman comes" but if you look very closely at the end of this shot, you can see that her mouth does not finish the word "comes" (her mouth stops at come).

Revealing: When Mary Poppins has the robin on her finger, just after the outside shot where the robin does his whistle bit, you can see the cables used to operate the bird on the back of her hand while she turns away from the window.

Continuity: When everyone is on top of the roof, Mary Poppins powders her nose, which results in her nose being black with soot. The scenes following that, her nose is normal and never black as when she powders it.

Continuity: When Mr. Banks takes the children to the bank, and they meet the directors, first the children are standing close together, with Mr. Banks right behind them. Later, when the elder Mr. Doors is talking to them, Mr. Banks is next to Michael and the children are farther apart. Later still, when we see Michael close up, Jane is out of the shot altogether, meaning that she is even farther away from him than previously.

Continuity: When Bert is showing Jane and Michael his chalk sketches and doing his tightrope demonstration, you can see the pigeons in the corner on the far side of the bench. In the next shot when Jane points out the English countryside, the pigeons are right behind Bert again and walking away.

Continuity: Jane and Michael switch sides while they are holding Burt's hand when he walks them home.

Revealing: During the 'Spoonful of Sugar' musical number, when Mary Poppins is singing to the robin in the children's room, the wire connected to the audio-animatronic bird can be seen just under Poppins' two fingers, very close to her palm.

Factual error: At the end of the scene where Bert is a one-man-band, he smashes a cymbal on his forehead at the end of his song. The cymbal could not make any sound as he is holding it with both hands, preventing any vibration.

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

Audio problem: After Bert rescues the Fox from the dogs the Fox says "Tis an elegant merry go round horse." If you look closely you'll notice that the voice recording is slightly off-sync with the animation on the Fox's mouth.

Revealing: When the rooftop dance sequence begins and 3 of Bert's pals appear to shoot out of 3 round smoke stacks, they are actually coming from behind the stacks.

Revealing: In the scene with the queue of Nannies, and the chimneytop scenes, the wires holding the actors can be seen clearly.

Factual error: When the cook attacks the chimney sweeps, she uses a non-stick frying pan. Non-stick frying pans weren't invented until the 1950s, and the movie takes place in the 1910s.

Revealing: When Mary is taking the things out of her bag when she arrives, she takes out a large floor lamp. You can see the lamp's post coming up through the bag and the table as she pulls it out.

Continuity: When Mary Poppins ascends to join the others for tea at Uncle Bert's house, she starts with her purse clasped in her hand. As she ascends, the purse is suddenly draped over her arm.