War Movies - Real & Fiction - Goofs and Trivia

[Owen]

Ron,
Germans as you know used lots of captured kit, so "mistake" could be excused.
Achtung Panzer! - Captured Tanks Gallery I!

I know this is Normandy but....




This one in the Ardennes

[spidge]

Trivia for
Tea with Mussolini (1999)

• Arabella's dog Nikki is actually the director's dog.
• The combat scenes late in the picture are clips from A Bridge Too Far (1977).

Goofs for
Tea with Mussolini (1999)

• Factual errors: In the scenes of the orphanage, several of the priests wear a biretta, which is a black four-cornered hat with a pom-pom. (Some other priests in these shots wear a different type of black hat with a brim.) A biretta has three blades on the top, at three of the four corners. There is no blade at the fourth corner. The blade-less corner is worn on the left side of the head. In all the shots but the final shot at the orphanage, the priests are wearing their birettas correctly (i.e. with the blade-less corner to the left). However, in that final shot, the priest is wearing his biretta incorrectly, with the blade-less side to the right.
• Factual errors: The tanks the Germans ride in on are in-fact U.S. Army M4 Sherman's, not German Built Panzer's.

Memorable Quotes from
Tea with Mussolini (1999)

Lady Hester: The Germans and the Italians couldn't get rid of us. There is absolutely no reason why we should surrender to the Scots.

---

Lady Hester: Americans just simply don't understand picnics!

[spidge]

Originally Posted by Ron Goldstein

No prizes for the right answer but does anybody out there know of other films where they’ve not done their homework?

Ron

Hi Ron,

That's why I started this thread as there are some rippers.

Not many in Tea with Mussolini however yours is there.

[Cpl Rootes]

Goofs for
The Desert Rats (1953)

• Anachronisms: In the beginning of the movie Rommel is being addressed as 'Field Marshall'. However, Rommel was at the time still only a General. He became Field Marshall only after the capture of Tobruk, which occurred in 1942, not 1941, after the tide of war had swung back again in favor of the Germans.
• Continuity: When the British aircraft are attacking German trucks carrying the prisoners, the planes shown in the distant shot are not the same planes in the close up. In fact, the planes in the close up have the black and white lines painted on their wings, which was not used for identification until approximately D-Day, and then only in Europe.

[Cpl Rootes]

Goofs for
The Battle of the River Plate (1956)

• Factual errors: When Captain Dove is first brought aboard the Graf Spee, the anti-aircraft gunners are wearing US-pattern steel helmets, not the German "coal-scuttle" design. This is noticeable in various other scenes as well, and is due to the fact that the Graf Spee is being played by the USS Salem.
• Continuity: After HMS Cumberland had joined Ajax and Achilles replacing Exeter, the three ships portrayed in following scenes were still the same three initial cruisers, with HMS Jamaica playing a role of HMS Exeter.
• Factual errors: A symbolic scene, when a crane lowers a lifeboat with Captain Dove into an aircraft hangar of "Admiral Graf Spee", and the roof closes over it, could not happen, because such hangars were typical for US ships only, and "Graf Spee" had no aircraft hangar.

Continuity: The Graf Spee goes down exactly as the sun sets, and then the British warships steam away with the sun still above the horizon.

[spidge]

Trivia for
Dunkirk (1958)

• Jack Hawkins was asked to play Charles Foreman
• 'Bernard Cribbens' is listed as being in this project by a number of books but cannot not be seen in the finished film.
• When the troopship taking the platoon home is bombed and sunk in Dunkirk harbour, the scene of the ship sinking is taken from the earlier film The Cruel Sea (1953) which depicts the sinking of HMS "Compass Rose".

[PearlJamNoCode]

Goofs for
Untergang, Der (2004)

• Anachronisms: When the drug for the Goebbels children is mixed, the Erlenmeyer flask is postwar as you can clearly see from the logo (Schott Mainz). The company moved there in 1951/2.
• Revealing mistakes: As the "corpses" of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler are paced in their grave outside the bunker in preparation for cremation, the bodies clearly move their legs in an attempt to lie flat in the hole.
• Continuity: When Göring's telegram is received in the bunker, a closeup shows the teletype machine printing the message in lowercase letters with German umlauts converted to ae, oe, ue and the closing note "heil hitler, h. goering, reichsfeldmarschall" aligned to the left. When the communication officer removes the paper from the machine, the text is mixed uppercase/lowercase with umlauts and the closing note is right aligned.

• Anachronisms: The map in Hitler's bunker shows a decolonized Africa, which didn't come to pass until the 1950s and 1960s.
• Anachronisms: The soap dispensers in the bunker's restrooms were, despite their classic looks, not invented until 1950 in France. They are called "Savon rotatif" (rotary soap) and were - more or less a piece of soap on a wall-mounted stick - a standard issue in French schools and magisterial buildings for many years.
• Continuity: After Magda Goebbels poisons her children, she comes out of their room and immediately crouches against the doorframe. In the next shot she's considerably further away from the doorframe than in the previous shot, with no time to have moved.
• Continuity: During the flight from the bunker, Muller is shot. Wen the camera cuts to his body on the ground there is a bullet wound in his right cheek. But no wound is seen on his face in the previous frames as we hear the shot and see him falling.
• Anachronisms: In the document Gen. Krebs hands over to Gen. Zhukov when they first meet for peace negotiations, the term "Nachfolge Regierung" appears. But in German, writing two nouns as isolated words with no visible connection is wrong (the correct writing would be either "Nachfolgeregierung" or "Nachfolge-Regierung"). While this is in itself a factual mistake, it is also an anachronism, since this mistake was not common before the English language started to influence German. Back in 1945, this was certainly not the case.
• Continuity: When SS-Obersturmbannführer Schenke wants to speak to the fat SS-Obergruppenführer about breaking apart his administration, on the yard of the supply department, at the first shots, SS-Obergruppenführer's foreface is intact; at the sudden, at the next shot, there is a small bandage at SS-Obergruppenführer's foreface.
• Miscellaneous: Goetz Otto is credited with portraying SS Hauptsturmfuehrer Otto Guensche, when in reality Guensche was a SS Sturmbannfuehrer. Wardrobe got it right however as his uniform has the correct collar and shoulder insignia.
• Miscellaneous: Thomas Kretchmann portrayed SS Gruppenfuehrer Hermann Fegelein, but his collar insignia is that of an SS Brigadefuehrer.
• Continuity: When Magda Goebbels is laying the playing-cards on the table, there is a cut which makes her repeat placing the last card in the row.