Glaring Film Gaffs! (Or: The Dry Look in 1917?)

[scotrace]

One wonders how some things happen in Hollywood.

Sometimes when watching a film, you can't help but notice that an otherwise believable scene is rather fouled up by a glaring detail. A hat completely out of place, for example:

That's a 1960's off-the-rack wool job in a film set around 1900.

Or hair:

Dr. Zhivago is full of hairstyles that are far outside the period of the film.

I doubt any real cowboy looked like this:

What other jarring film oddities have you noticed??

 

[Sonoma Jack]

The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn has a car passing in the background. It figures--it was filmed in a park in Chico, CA.

 

[dhermann1]

In the 1992 file "Swoon", about the Leopold and Loeb murders, which took place in the 1920's, they're seen using touch tone phones in the phone booth. This has become an almost infamous anachronism. I think it may have been done intentionally for some unexplainable "creative" reason. Whatever the reason it's maddeningly jarring.

 

[scotrace]

I was mainly thinking period films that ignore proper fashions or hair for the period.

Maybe Cleopatra didn't wear this do'. But my mom did for years.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Harrison Ford's overly long hair in the movie 'Hanover Street'. Especially,when he is masquerading as the German! I tried to watch that movie on VHS the other night and it was difficult - I like the scenes where Halloran is waiting for the girl all day in streets of the city, dog-ends piling up around his feet. But some of the other scenes are just too hard to take.

Also, and maybe more importantly, there were no B-25 squadrons based in England during the 8th USAAF tenure there. (There may have been B-25's that transitioned there or came through for one reason or another, but there were no B-25 missions launched from 8th USAAF bases in England as portrayed in the film! It was B-26's in the 8th.)

All around, even as I enjoyed the film when it first appeared, it's disappointing that subtle facts like that get overlooked.

Harrison!....get a G.I. haircut!!! lol

-dixon cannon

 

[deanglen]

Pattons and Chaffees in The Battle of The Bulge (1965) Actually most of the film is a gaffe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge_(film)


dean

 

[CharlieH.]

Or hair:

Dr. Zhivago is full of hairstyles that are far outside the period of the film.

I beg to differ mac, that guy's hair style is actually somewhat correct for Zhivago's early 20th century period... (click)

Now for some glaring boners on film, I can remember....
- Modern cars in Chinatown
- Missing trolley wires in Who Framed Roger Rabbit
- Very modern diesel train in The Majestic
- Suits with low you-know-whats in The Aviator
- Very low trousers in A League Of Their Own
- 1950's fashions in The Benny Goodman Story (plus some mildly anachronistic train footage)
- Records spinning at 33rpm in O Brother Where Art Thou? (and "You Are My Sunshine", which not only hadn't been written in the film's timeframe, but is refered to as old timey music...)
- Afrika Korps and a 1938 Zeppelin flight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (But still very exciting)

- Blatantly modern ships in Pearl Harbor

 

[dostacos]

the American trainers {SNJ/AT6} used as Zero's or Messerschmidt's

 

[dostacos]

just watched another one, where the wagon's driver is shot off or jumps to the horses but the reins run up into a hole in the wagon or stagecoach that should not be there, because that is where the real teamster is driving the team....

 

[Ed Bass]

Can't recall the film's name but last week I was watching a movie on TCM made in the late 50's but supposed to take place in the 1920's.
Scene: Interior of 1928 Buick driving on city streets with standard "rear window film" of traffic.
Every car following was from the 1950's!

Best, Toots

 

[Flivver]

Those rear window shots were frequently a problem with Hollywood. On the Untouchables TV show, set in the early 1930s, one can frequently see cars and trucks from a later era through the rear window (over Elliot Ness' shoulder).

 

[Atticus Finch]

Hi Folks,

Hollywood never manages to get guitars placed properly in time. I can't count how many 1880s movie cowboys I've seen strumming bronze-stringed guitars with tortoise-shell pickguards and Shaller or Kluson tuners.:eusa_doh:

Atticus

 

[Quigley Brown]

I've seen a couple of westerns (and other period films) with jet contrails up overhead.

 

[scotrace]

I beg to differ mac, that guy's hair style is actually somewhat correct for Zhivago's early 20th century period... (click)

Maybe sorta kinda.

I was looking at hers.

 

[funneman]

Those rear window shots were frequently a problem with Hollywood. On the Untouchables TV show, set in the early 1930s, one can frequently see cars and trucks from a later era through the rear window (over Elliot Ness' shoulder).

Reminds me of Robert Stack's car scene in Airplane when the view changes in the rear window from cars to Native Americans on horseback.


Also, I was watching a movie set in the 50's last week and I could swear a woman called the police on the telephone by dialing 9-1-1!

 

[KittyT]

Faye Dunaway's hair in "Bonnie and Clyde".

 

[Rooster]

You can always tell a 60's or 70's film by the women's hair styles. They made no effort to change the current fashionable doo into a 30's or 40's doo. Really painfull to watch at times.

 

[Atticus Finch]

Hi Folks,

I my post above, I forgot to mention that sometimes Hollywood does get it right. In the film The Long Riders, Ry Cooder plays a vintage parlor guitar in his version of I'm Just A Good 'Ol Rebel. It is a very moving scene, indeed.

Atticus

 

[J. M. Stovall]

In the biopic Ray when they are heading to a gig and pass under a railroad trestle there are modern shipping containers going down the tracks.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

I had a couple books by Bill Givens - Film Flubs and Son of Film Flubs. Fun, fun books. For some odd reason, I gave them away. [huh]

Watch The Wizard of Oz carefully. Dorothy's hair ranges from just below her shoulders to almost waist-length.

Of the many things I remember (see above), and the many more that I've forgotten, the best flub in my opinion came from the epic Lawrence of Arabia: When reviewing the movie for its DVD release, the director re-watched the film and realized that, for the fifty years it'd been in theaters and on TV since its release, an entire reel had been printed backward. It was the watch on Peter O'Toole's wrist that gave it away.


Lee
___________________________

Yes, he corrected it for the DVD.