Character mistake: Liesl sings "I Am 16" with Rolfe before she is ever taught to sing "Do Re Mi" by Maria. We are led to believe the children have no concept of singing, so how was she able to sing this song before learning to sing? (00:41:00 - 00:42:00)
Suggested correction: They certainly know about singing. It's just been banned in the house since their mother died. Liesl, as the oldest, would have had the most experience of it.
Factual error: The von Trapps are shown walking over the border to Switzerland after a short drive out of the centre of town...except Salzburg is about 200km east of Switzerland. If one walked across the border at Salzburg, you'd be entering Germany, which is where (I believe) the people they were trying to get away from lived. Take a look at a map.
Suggested correction: Even though the von Trapps were 200km from the Swiss border, in the last 5 mins, they received a car from the sisters at the convent and the sisters disabled the cars of their pursuers.
Captain Von Trapp was clear, when they were about to hide, that they would drive into the mountains in Salzburg (which the movie did a close up on to show it was those mountains specifically) and walk over them on foot confirming the movie is pretending those are mountains into Switzerland. The director himself admitted this when the real Maria Von Trapp complained of this error. He said "In Hollywood you can make up your own geography."
