North by Northwest

Other mistake: The second bus in the scene before the crop duster has no license plate.

Other mistake: When Cary Grant steps down from the bus from Chicago prior to the crop-duster scene, naturally the bus is heading away from his departure point. Later, when he hijacks the car to effect his getaway, he makes a U-turn so that, instead of returning to Chicago, he is heading in the opposite direction.

North by Northwest mistake picture

Other mistake: At the train station, the same red-haired woman in a green dress with two distinctive suitcases appears three times in different places despite her walking the opposite way. Sometimes she has a hat and others not.

Sacha

More mistakes in North by Northwest

Roger Thornhill: The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.
Eve Kendall: What makes you think you have to conceal it?
Roger Thornhill: She might find the idea objectionable.
Eve Kendall: Then again, she might not.

More quotes from North by Northwest

Trivia: In the scene when Cary Grant is going up the steps to the UN, Alfred Hitchcock shot it from a rug truck across the street. He wasn't allowed to shoot the front of the UN. If you look closely, you can see a security guard in the left corner.

More trivia for North by Northwest

Question: Why do the kidnappers take Thornhill to the Townsend home and pretend to be Lester Townsend and members of his household? They could have taken him to some obscure place instead, at less risk of being found out.

Answer: More than likely, they felt that Roger would be dead and they would not be found out. The fact that he survives their DUI plot and returns to the house with the police only serves to makes him look more suspicious and guilty. It's to move the plot along, nothing more.

ChiChi

The bigger plot hole is, if Van Dam really believes Roger is Kaplan, why would he think that Roger would bring the police and go through the trouble of preparing "Mrs. Kaplan" to make the police think he's crazy? If Roger really was a spy, he doesn't need help from the police and would have just disappeared instead of retracing his steps. So if Van Dam anticipated the actions taken by Roger, he must believe at some level that Roger is telling the truth and would have looked deeper into it.

More questions & answers from North by Northwest

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