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Quotes

Roger Thornhill: The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.

Eve Kendall: What makes you think you have to conceal it?

Roger Thornhill: She might find the idea objectionable.

Eve Kendall: Then again, she might not.

See more...

Trivia

Cary Grant was born on January 18th, 1904, and the actress playing his mother, Jessie Royce Landis, was born on November 25th, 1896, making her just seven years older than Cary. According to commentary on the DVD, it was thought that casting Landis as Cary Grant's mother would make Cary look young enough to be a believable love interest for Eva Marie Saint. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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North by Northwest (1959) - 45 mistakes

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau (add more)

Genres: Action, Adventure, Mystery, Thriller

Mistakes
Trivia
Pictures
Quotes
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Questions
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Revealing: In the shooting scene in the Mount Rushmore cafe, a boy in the background puts his fingers in his ears, because he knows the gun is about to be shot.

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Other: When the plane hits the gas truck and it catches on fire, instead of getting out on the passenger side, the passenger crawls out the driver's side.

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Continuity: When in James Mason's house in South Dakota, Cary Grant writes a message to Eva Marie Saint on a matchbook from which several matches are missing. When Ms. Saint subsequently reads the message the matchbook is full.

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Factual error: When Cary Grant is attacked by the crop duster, he is supposed to be between Chicago and Indianapolis. Unfortunately, northwest Indiana looks nothing like this. The scene in the movie has miles and miles of treeless landscape. Even in the flattest farmlands of Indiana, there are many visible groves of trees.

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Visible crew/equipment: Cary Grant is crouching in his bunk bed in the train. The lights of the studio get reflected on his broken sunglasses when he shows them to Eve.

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Continuity: In the scene where Cary Grant is hanging off Mount Rushmore, and Eva Marie Saint falls and grabs Cary's back pocket, she rips it but in the next scene the pants are un-ripped.

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Revealing: When Thornhill is going up the driveway of the house near Mount Rushmore, there are shadows, even thought it is night-time! These shadows are far too strong to be moon shadows and there is no source of artificial light that could be making them.

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Continuity: While Thornhill and his mother are investigating Kaplan's hotel room, he decides to try on one of the man's suits from the closet to see if he and Kaplan are similar in stature. He tries on a navy or dark colored suit coat and then holds the pants up against himself to check the length. In the close up of the trousers, they are now a light gray in color. The camera returns to a full shot and, once again, he has the darker trousers in his hands. You can also see the light gray suit in the closet behind him.

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Continuity: While Roger and Eve converse before dinner on the train, Roger's glass mysteriously changes places several times.  When shot from behind, he's holding the glass; from the front, it's on the table.

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Continuity: When the aircraft crashes into the tanker, the position of the aircraft, relative to the edge of the road at impact and afterward, changes several times.

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Continuity: In Eva Marie Saint's hotel room, after the crop-dusting, Cary Grant attempts to copy a note she has removed from a pad, by scratching with a pencil point - horizontally. In the close-up of the note, it has been scratched vertically.

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Continuity: In the very first scene when the train pulls out of Grand Central Station you can see that the sun is setting. Then when they sit down to eat it's the middle of the day again.

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Continuity: When Eva Marie Saint grabs the statue from James Mason and bolts, the spies chase after her. They had no way of knowing she would do such a thing, and yet they are suddenly equipped with long, heavy-duty flashlights.

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Factual error: In New York, a newspaper headline reads, MANHUNT ON FOR UN KILLER, with a smaller headline below reading "Nixon promises West will remain in Berlin". The next night Eva Marie Saint reads the crop-duster plane story in the Chicago Sun-Times. Since the Sun-Times was a morning paper and the accident occurred in the afternoon, she must have been reading the following morning's edition. But a smaller headline underneath carries the same story: "Nixon promises West will remain in Berlin"; two days later, it's old news.

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Factual error: The date shown on the newspaper after Cary Grant is accused of stabbing the diplomat at the U.N. is Nov. 25, 1958. The subsequent outdoor scenes clearly show leaves on the trees and people dressed for warmer weather.

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Continuity: Cary Grant, running through Grand Central Station after fleeing from the UN Building, has brown shoes, then black, then brown.

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Continuity: In the scene where Cary Grant runs out of the hotel and jumps into a waiting cab, the two bad guys giving chase immediately jump in the next cab and should be the very next vehicle right behind Cary Grant's. But when Cary Grant looks behind him through the cab window to see if he's being followed, the bad guy's cab has disappeared. We get a clear line of sight all the way back to the hotel and the car is not there. Instead we see a third cab pulling into the space they just left.

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Continuity: When Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are riding in the dinner car on the train, there are several instances where the landscape/view as seen from their window repeats itself. Keep an eye out for a bridge they never get any closer to, and a section of tall iron work near the tracks they keep passing over and over.

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Continuity: Cary's position was close to Eva and he almost kissed her, but then his position is farther away when he asks, "Shall I?" Also, in the kissing scene, when Cary is shown he is kissing her near an open door, but then they are against the wall again.

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Continuity: In the scene on the train in the dining car, the flower arrangement on the table changes. When the shot is over Cary Grant's shoulder the flowers are pink carnations with four large leaves, but when the shot is over Eve Marie Saint's shoulder it's a smaller display of pink daisies with one leaf.

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