The Talented Mr. Ripley

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Tom is analysing Dickie's handwriting, Tom is smoking a cigarette and is shown taking a puff. The camera suddenly cuts to behind Tom's head where he has moved his arm & the cigarette - there is not enough time for him to do so. (00:28:24)

Continuity mistake: When Tom is playing the piano in the apartment, he has both of Dickie's rings on, but when he gets to the door when Freddie is there, he only has the pinky ring on the left hand. The gold middle finger ring is now missing when ne puts his right hand up on the door, but he never took it off. (01:21:00)

Continuity mistake: When Tom is taking Freddy's body out of his building, Freddy's coat is buttoned to the top. When Tom puts Freddy in the car, his coat is suddenly undone and blood is visible on his shirt. (01:28:00)

Cynthia Gurski

Continuity mistake: Tom has a scrape on his face as he is typing the "suicide" note in the apartment. But as he is leaving and peering around the corner of the building, the scrape is gone. (01:38:00 - 01:44:00)

Continuity mistake: When Tom, as Dickie, rents a place in Rome, and after Tom kills Freddie, the police are all over him. Marge comes calling and Tom, as Dickie, asks the policeman to ask her to come back later, which leaves Tom alone with the detective. But as we see Marge creeping up the stairs, to see Dickie, suddenly, the policeman is with Tom and the detective, even though the policeman had left and Tom had closed the doors, so the policeman should not have been there.

kh1616

Continuity mistake: When Marge gets out of the water and climbs the stairs on the sailboat her swimsuit is blue. But when she is on board and we get a close up it is red.

Continuity mistake: When Freddie is driving the boat, the direction keeps changing from shots to shots. Dickie told him to keep the same direction.

Dr Wilson

Continuity mistake: During the opera intermission scene, when Tom first meets up with Marge and Peter, Peter's hair is neatly slicked back. In the next shot, his hair is hanging in his face a little. The next time he's shown, his hair is neat once more, and a moment later it's messy again.

Continuity mistake: When Tom and Dickie enter the jazz club in Naples, Dickie's hat keeps appearing and disappearing from his head. (Within the film this is a matter of continuity and thus a mistake, regardless if there is an explanation on the music video.)

Continuity mistake: A far ways into the film, when Gweneth Paltrow is leaving on the boat, Matt Damon is standing on the dock watching her leave. At one point, it cuts to a far shot showing him pulling his hair back with his hand, but then it shows a shot from behind, and his hands are down at his sides. It's not very likely he could move his hands that fast.

Continuity mistake: Dickie's extra lover, Silvana, turns up dead, during a religious ceremony, and before anyone can get to her, she is face down, but when they do get to her, she is face up, without anyone touching her or from choppy water - the water is flat, no chop.

kh1616

Continuity mistake: When Sylvana's body is found during the "Festival of the Madonna," her body floats up on its stomach; there are no waves and she is in fact dead, so how then does her body get from her floating on its stomach to floating on its back in one shot?

Continuity mistake: When Dickie and Tom go out on the boat, Dickie is wearing his white jacket. When Tom swims back to shore, the white jacket is dry on the rocks as if Dickie hadn't taken it with him.

Continuity mistake: When Tom is with Peter on the boat sailing to Greece and Tom says he's going to watch the sunset, the sun is just above the horizon. When Tom goes into Peter's room after talking with Marge, you can see the sun in the exact same position out the porthole window in Peter's room.

Cynthia Gurski

Continuity mistake: From the viewpoint of a boat behind Dickie's boat "The Bird", when Dickie gives the tiller to Freddie, so he can go below with Marge, there's hardly any wind, both sails are flapping around, but when we get the view from midships, the front sail, which was on the starboard side, is now, suddenly, on the port side and full of wind, no flapping around at all.

kh1616

Visible crew/equipment: When Dickie and Ripley are scootering down a little Italian hillside, you can see the shadow of the whole film crew against the hill.

More mistakes in The Talented Mr. Ripley

Tom Ripley: You're the brother I never had. I'm the brother you never had. I would do anything for you, Dickie.

More quotes from The Talented Mr. Ripley

Question: At the end of the movie, when Tom finds out that Meredith is on the boat, he wants to kill either her or Peter because they both believe different stories about him and might run into each other. Is there any reason why he chose to kill Peter?

Answer: After running into Meredith, Tom's plan was to stay in the cabin with Peter the entire trip to avoid them seeing one another. But after Tom makes that suggestion, Peter tells Tom that he seen him kissing Meredith. He couldn't avoid or kill her since Peter already saw her. Family members also saw Tom with Meredith. If Meredith suddenly vanished or was killed I'm quite sure there'd be an investigation. Peter was the only option. No one is on board to report Peter missing. Once the boat docks, Tom will be long gone before they discover Peters body. Unlike Meredith, her family would be looking for her immediately since they're traveling together. I'm quite sure he'd much rather have killed Meredith, she meant nothing to him.

Answer: Meredith was travelling with many other people and he can't kill all of them, so he has to kill Peter. Anthony Minghella discusses this in the audio commentary of the film.

Answer: I saw a lot of reviews saying killing Meredith would be harder because she traveled with a lot of people on the ship. Considering that Tom was able to figure out the old trick where he made Meredith to coincidentally meet up with Peter and Marge in a cafe, I'm pretty sure he could up with the same plot to tell Meredith to meet him somewhere around the corner of the ship too, say in the middle of the night to look at the moon etc. Peter beforehand can be exhausted due to consumption of alcohol or had steamy session of coitus so he could never find out that Peter went out to see Meredith. I don't know how the cruise ship of the 50s worked out at the time but there must be a range of dinner time where people go to a hall for their meals - therefore Tom could persuade Meredith to have some alone time at her cabin while the rest of her Cos were having dinner. Since Meredith was infatuated of him, anything what Tom could have said or planed something with her she would have agreed.

More questions & answers from The Talented Mr. Ripley

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