North by Northwest

Factual error: The 20th Century Limited train, where Grant and Saint first meet, is supposed to be heading west in the afternoon, past the Great Lakes which should be on the right side of the train, but the lakes are visible through the windows on the left, so the views were shot heading east, and the supposed lowering late afternoon sun would in fact be the sun soon after sunrise.

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Suggested correction: The fact that you can see the far shore of the "Great lake" tells me this isn't Ontario, Erie, or Michigan. I always assumed it must be the Finger Lakes, but I'm not familiar with the topography there. Just an assumption based on the knowing the Great Lakes and knowing that's not what was out the window.

Continuity mistake: In the scene where Eve writes on the note pad she doesn't write enough. Later you can see much more to the address. (01:20:50 - 01:25:15)

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Trivia: Cary Grant was born on January 18th, 1904, and the actress playing his mother, Jessie Royce Landis, was born on November 25th, 1896, making her just seven years older than Cary. According to commentary on the DVD, it was thought that casting Landis as Cary Grant's mother would make Cary look young enough to be a believable love interest for Eva Marie Saint.

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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.

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