Character mistake: In the movie, Gregory Peck claims that he speaks German "perfectly." But in the scene where he uses the dead cliff guard's radio, he speaks with a noticeably thick - and highly un-German - accent. (00:57:22)
Guns of Navarone (1961)
1 character mistake - chronological order
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker
Factual error: Miller rigs his booby trap by attaching the wires from the bomb to a pole down which a metal runner slides, so that when the runner touches the wires it completes the circuit and detonates the bomb. The trouble is, the pole is made of steel, and steel is very conductive indeed. Miller attaches the exposed end of the wire to the pole without any insulation or gap. The circuit will actually be completed when Miller attaches the battery, and he and his booby trap will be blown sky high.
Corporal Miller: Sir, I've inspected this boat, and I think you ought to know that I can't swim.
Trivia: At the very end of the film when Gregory Peck and David Niven are standing on the deck of the warship watching the explosions, you can see a very distinctive injury on Niven's upper lip. During the filming of the sequence where the commandos climb the cliffs he was slammed into the rock face by the water dumped on them to simulate the waves breaking over them. The resulting infection put him in hospital. He complains about the indifference of the film's producers in his book "The Moon's A Balloon."
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