Continuity mistake: Just before the Captain is about to sing Eidelweiss to the children, Max, Maria and the Baroness, the Baroness says to Max "Well why didn't you tell me, I could have brought along my harmonica." She has a glass of champagne in her hand and is about to take a sip but the camera cuts back to the Captain starting to sing and the glass is back resting in her hand. (01:21:30)
Continuity mistake: After "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" a nun is shown walking Maria to Mother Abess's office. She says, "You may go in now, Maria", places her hand on Maria's shoulder, and then walks away. In the next shot that's viewing them from inside the office, the nun is seen repeating the same action.
Continuity mistake: After the boat overturns on the lake, and Maria is standing on the terrace arguing with the Captain, her wet hair style changes several times.
Continuity mistake: When the Captain is asked to allow the children to sing in the festival by Max, he protests. He crosses to a table and says "Max." and picks up a glass. The shot changes, he says "My children do not sing in public", and there is now a bottle in his hand.
Continuity mistake: At the party Captain von Trapp puts on for the baroness, there is a scene where the guests are being greeted by Captain von Trapp and the Baroness inside the doorway of the house. When Herr Zeller is greeted and he looks ahead you can see a lady with brown hair in a pale blue dress being greeted in the background and then looking over her left shoulder. It then cuts to a scene where Herr Zeller has moved further into the house away from Captain von Trapp and the Baroness, and you can see she is greeted a second time and again looks over her left shoulder. (01:25:05)
Continuity mistake: When Maria leaves the Abbey to go to the Von Trapps, she walks for a ways, then takes what appears to be a rather long bus ride. This shows a fair amount of distance between the Von Trapps' house and the Abbey. Yet, when Maria snuck out to return to the Abbey during the party, it was night, and she had no ride waiting. Later, after the Captain tells the children he will marry the Baroness, they walk to and from the Abbey in an unsuccessful attempt to see Maria, and in an apparently short amount of time. From the initial bus ride, the Abbey was simply too far away for those walks to be believable.
Continuity mistake: Maria goes to see Mother Abbess after they sing the song, when Maria enters the room the chair is at the end of the desk, but when Mother Abbess tells her to sit, it is clearly in the middle.
Continuity mistake: Maria sits in front of Mother Abbess's table, but when the angle changes she is several meters away.
Continuity mistake: When Liesl creeps through Maria's window there's a close-up on Maria where the lighting on the wall is totally different and all the previous shadows are gone. A frame later, from a different angle, they're back.
Factual error: The von Trapp family's eating habits do not match the time and place. eg. They cut up all of the meat on the plate into bitesize pieces, then put down the knife, take the fork in the right hand and continue eating with only the fork. This would not have happened in an Austrian family of their rank at that time in history.
Continuity mistake: When Mother Abbess tells Maria to leave the premises, the stuff on her desk changes positions.
Continuity mistake: During the storm, Gretel enters Maria's room and opens the door, which bounces back. A frame later the door is moving in the opposite direction.
Continuity mistake: In the Do-Re-Mi scene, when the children and Maria are running back and forth on the steps at the very end of the scene, when it is about to end, Kurt doesn't reach the top step, and after the song has ended, you see him stepping up to join everyone else.
Continuity mistake: When the kids fall off the boat, the Baroness's hand rests by her hip. A frame later it rests against the Captain's back.
Factual error: When the Von Trapp family is hiding in the Abbey to avoid the Nazis, they are hiding behind some headstones. In reality, these headstones are flush against the wall and no one would be able to fit behind them.
Continuity mistake: After Liesel comes into Maria's room and Maria goes to look out the window, you can see the top of the ladder Liesel climbed up. In the next shot the ladder is gone.
Other mistake: At the end of the Do-Re-Mi number, as Maria and the children are going up the stairs at the end of the song, Kurt still has his mouth open, even though the song has finished.
Revealing mistake: In the Do-Re-Mi scene, when the children and Maria are running up and down the steps, Charmian Carr (Liesl) is doing the correct choreography, but was unsure of herself. Heather Menzies (Louisa) got it wrong, but did so confidently. Carr then takes a false step in order to make her movements match Menzies'. Carr confirms this in the 40th anniversary special: she second guessed herself during the filming, and that's why she corrected herself, but upon watching the movie, she realized she'd been correct in the first place. Viewers can confirm that Carr was correct because she initially lined up (diagonally) with the other children on her side, while Menzies was out of line.
Continuity mistake: During "So Long, Farewell", the large area rug in front of the kids moves just after the "cuckoo" part of the song.
Continuity mistake: During the "My favourite things" song the coat on the chair disappears.
Answer: In the film, the Mother Abess explains to Maria that the Captain Von Trapp's wife died "several years" ago. This is commonly misheard by viewers as "seven years." In reality, the actual mother of the Von Trapp children was Agathe Whitehead, who died of scarlet fever in 1922, just four years before Maria came to the Von Trapp home, initially as a tutor (not a governess) in 1926.
Michael Albert