North by Northwest (1959) - 43 mistakes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Continuity: The first scene that they show of the train going up the Hudson River is wrong. The hills in the background are much further up the river past Croton NY. When they are eating the train is back down near the wider part of the Hudson around Tarrytown NY.

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.

Continuity: Thornhill and his mother go to Kaplan's hotel room, room 796, to check the place out. There are two telephones in the room and both phones have old-fashioned non-coil cords connecting the phone and the handset. But when Thornhill rings the buzzer to summon the maid you can see that the phone suddenly has a more modern coil handset cord.

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.

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.

Continuity: In the hospital room, Thornhill puts on the clothes the Professor brought him while they talk. In one shot, Thornhill is putting on the shirt. Then the camera moves briefly to the Professor. When it returns to Thornhill, he has almost finished fastening the trousers, although too little time has elapsed for him to have picked them up from the bed and put them on. Seconds later, when he climbs out the window and walks along the ledge, he is also wearing shoes, which he could not have put on and tied that fast.

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.

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.

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.

Continuity: In the last scene before Chicago the train is going through the tunnel at Breakneck Pass north of Cold Spring NY. When they're going back home at the end of the movie theoretically they should be going the same way but they're not. The final tunnel shot in North by Northwest is the Southern Pacific railroad tunnel between Santa Susana and Chatsworth California.

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.

Continuity: When Cary Grant writes a message on a matchbook and Eve Marie Saint reads it, the number of lines in the message changes. He writes 3 lines, she reads 4 lines.

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

Plot hole: When Eve is being led out to the airplane, she bolts when two shots are fired from inside the house (presumably Anna firing at Thornhill, not realizing that the gun was loaded with blanks). Moments later, she jumps into a car driven by Thornhill, and they escape together. There is no way Thornhill could have gotten there that fast, given that he was in the house only seconds earlier.

Continuity: Near the beginning of the film, as Thornton has arrived at The Plaza and is opening the door of the taxi to exit it; visible through the rear window is a red and white Ford taxi, parked behind Thornton's taxi. Instantaneously, in the next shot taken from the sidewalk, he is shown completing his exit from the cab. Now however, there is a light colored Dodge taxi cab parked directly behind them.

Revealing: Thornhill & the "Professor" have a chat on the airport tarmack, in which it's revealed to Thornhill that Eve is a secret agent and in danger. At that moment the camera dollies in on Thornhill for dramatic effect. As it does, the distant airplane in the background gets closer very nearly as fast as does actor Cary Grant, revealing that the background in this scene is, in fact, a rear projection on a screen just beyond the actor.

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.

Continuity: On the patio outside the restaurant at Mt. Rushmore the professor goes inside first. His shadow falls upward to the right, there is no glare on the upper windows and no building shadow on the ground. Thornhill walks in seconds later and his shadow falls downwards to the left, there is a strong glare on the windows and the building casting a shadow on the ground.

Audio problem: Near the end of the movie when Cary Grant says, "Come along Mrs. Thornhill." If you read lips he's actually saying, "That's it."

Continuity: When Cary Grant arrives at the hotel in Chicago, he sees Eva Marie Saint enter an elevator. By looking at the indicator light he sees that she has gotten off on the fourth floor. He would have had to have binoculars to see the elevator indicator light from where he was standing.

Continuity: At Prairie Stop 21, after the second man arrives, shots on Thornhill show that his left arm is bent (the sleeve is folded), but the wide shot on both of them shows his arms at his sides.

Continuity: When Thornhill is talking to the maid in Kaplan's hotel room, right after she identifies him as Kaplan, his arm changes from bent over his stomach to straight at his side.

Audio problem: Before the famous attack by a crop spraying aircraft, Cary Grant is set down in the middle of nowhere from a Greyhound Scenicruiser. Another bus, a Flxible BR-29, also stops briefly. The soundtrack of the Scenicruiser's engine is re-used for the Flxible.

Continuity: When Cary Grant's character, Roger Thornhill arrives at the UN building in search of George Kaplan we see his shadow fall onto the door of the cab, as if the sun is behind him. But when you look at the pedestrians on the sidewalk, their shadow falls in the opposite direction. Simple mistake to make when using 3 point lighting in a studio environment to produce a rear projection process shot.

Continuity: When the plane crashes into the truck, the bystanders walking towards the scene have shadows, which change angles as you see the next shot. They took them both in the morning and the afternoon.

Continuity: His suit changes colour as he is running from the aeroplane. First blue, then brown, then back to blue.

Visible crew/equipment: When Cary Grant and his film-mother enter the elevator at the Plaza this is filmed through a glass-door and you can see the reflection of a crewmember in a white shirt who is crouching below or next to the camera.

Plot hole: Cary Grant arrives at the spies' house in Rapid City by taxi. Yet when he and Eva escape, they suddenly have a car at their disposal.

Continuity: As Thornhill backs away from murdered Townsend, the knife in his hand changes from point down to point up.

Audio problem: When Thornhill and Kendall reunite after the shooting, they are obviously on a soundstage and not on location in the wilderness. There is absolutely no background noise, which is impossible in the outdoors: leaves rustling, birds calling, water trickling, wind gusting, etc. prevent the complete silence depicted by the movie. The quality of the actors' voices also sounds like indoors rather than an open space.

Continuity: The top and back of Mount Rushmore looks nothing like they portray it in the final scenes of the film. This is a mountain, and they would need climbing equipment to get to the top of the mountain. Also there are no trees at the top, and the is a vault at the top of the mountain, behind the monuments. This vault was originally planned to be used as a museum, but Congress withdrew funding because of World War II, and the museum was never completed.

Plot hole: The villains try to kill Cary Grant by getting him drunk and sending him off a cliff in a white Mercedes. He manages to get back on the road and they follow him in a Cadillac limousine. Cary passes a parked police car which gives chase. He brakes to avoid a bicyclist and the police car rear-ends the Mercedes. Immediately a blue 1941 Ford rear-ends the police car. Where did it come from? It would have to have been ahead of the Cadillac and very close to the police car to do so, but it doesn't appear until the moment of impact.

Continuity: When Eva Marie Saint is going out to the aeroplane near the end of the film, it is dark as they walk away from the house, but by the time they reach the plane it is suddenly daylight.

Factual error: Cary Grant steals a redcap's uniform while he was sleeping, implying that the redcap had been on the overnight run. Redcaps didn't ride the trains; they worked in the stations.