War movie editing errors

[Phantomfixer]

While reading a post in the outerwear section, an idea for a new thread hit me. Maybe it has been done before. If so please excuse. I put this in the WWII section because of the war movie theme...

One example comes to mind is the movie Fighter Squadron(1948). In the opening scene Tom D'Andrea "Dolan" is riding around in a jeep. The jeep changes from one with vacuum wipers to one without several times, and Dolan's MSgt stripes on his M-41, go from sewn on to painted on, again several times.
Edmond O'Brien "Hardin" is shot down in one scene. He lands with a mae west on. Then he doesn't have it on, I think the scene shows him taking it off along with his parachute. Then the next scene he has it on again waving off his friends flying around.
One of my favorite movies mind you, I would love to have Robert Stacks flying boots.
And do you not hate it when a .45 shoots with the slide in the locked back position?? Not in this movie but in general...

 

[Monsoon]

What about the beach obstacles facing the wrong direction in "Saving Private Ryan"?

And about the .45; doesn't that come under the rule of "One bullet kills twenty indians"? I can't remember who joked about that, maybe Carlin.

 

[Spitfire]

In Battle of Britain - a masterpiece back then and even today - the same german Heinkel pilot dies several times.
And most of the female actors and extras have 60's hairstyle.

But I still love it!!!

 

[Wally_Hood]

Continuity errors in editing, not as bad as cowboys with 1990's psychological problems or WW2 ground staff telling an officer "I'll update you with the information," or another cowpoke threatening someone with "Do I hafta spell it out for ya!?"

 

[Chas]

At the end of "Das Boot" the captain dies. He didn't in real life- Lehmann-Willenbrock passed on some time in the 1980's, I believe.

"Tora Tora Tora" has scads of 1960's hairstyles. It's still one of the best films about PH, though.

"The Guns Of Navarone" and "Bridge On The River Kwai" are both fictionalized endings.

Or are we only talking about continuity?

 

[Shangas]

If we're talking just about general errors and goofs in war movies, I believe there was one in "Saving Private Ryan". When the sniper is up in the belltower at the end of the movie, he uses hand-signs to indicate enemy movements. Apparently, these hand-signs were period-correct for the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s...but were anachronistic for WWII in 1944.

And something completely unimportant, but there's an anachronism at the end of "The Pianist" (the war film about Wladyslaw Szpilman, the Polish-Jewish pianist). He's playing on a Steinway with the modern 'Steinway' logo on it, one which didn't show up until the 1980s or 1990s I believe. It's plain and simple. The old Steinway logo was written in German blackletter gothic text.

 

[Phantomfixer]

We can talk about any errors in movies I guess. It was more directed at stuff like a 1980s piano in a 1940 setting. We all know Hollywood never gets the story right 100% of the time.
I just found out that Pvt Blythe from Band o Brothers did not die in 1948 like the series stated. He survived and stayed in the Army serving in Korea and I think Viet Nam. Compton never rejoined his unit at the end of the war. he stayed in Paris in charge of MWR, ie baseball, basketball sports stuff for the gis.

Speaking of BOB notice when the C-47s take off for Normandy, the pilot is wearing what appears to be green David Clark headsets.
And what about jeeps?? Using CJ-2a/3A or even 3B in WWII movies. Hmmm
What else have you noticed?

 

[Phantomfixer]

In Battle of Britain - a masterpiece back then and even today - the same german Heinkel pilot dies several times.
And most of the female actors and extras have 60's hairstyle.

But I still love it!!!

WWII German pilots were hard to come by in the 60's!!

 

[AmateisGal]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the movie Von Ryan's Express (with Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard), Ryan dies at the end, but he doesn't in the book...

 

[Harp]

If we're talking just about general errors and goofs in war movies, I believe there was one in "Saving Private Ryan". When the sniper is up in the belltower at the end of the movie, he uses hand-signs to indicate enemy movements. Apparently, these hand-signs were period-correct for the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s...but were anachronistic for WWII in 1944.

US Army has used hand signals since the Revolutionary War.

 

[John in Covina]

One thing that I chuckle about is back in the 70's the special effects weren't special at all.
In movies like Patton the plane that was shot down always crashed on the other side of a big hill so they did not have to simulate a plane crash with models.

 

[WH1]

US Army has used hand signals since the Revolutionary War.

Well at least one hand signal!

 

[Spitfire]

In many war movies from the 60s, 70s and even 80s war was a blodless affair.
No blod was spilled in The Longest Day or The Riwer Kwai.
People get short and they just fall and roll around a little - no blod. Nice and clean.

 

[Shangas]

US Army has used hand signals since the Revolutionary War.

Whether or not they used signals is not the point.

The point was that the signals used in the FILM were anachronistic, because they were Vietnam-era signals in an WWII film.

 

[John in Covina]

In many war movies from the 60s, 70s and even 80s war was a bloodless affair.
No blod was spilled in The Longest Day or The River Kwai. People get shot and they just fall and roll around a little - no blood. Nice and clean.

That's a good point, as I recall when it came out the movie Bonnie and Clyde was one of the films that people got upset over because of the amount of blood they showed. Actually in a lot of films when someone got shot not only was there no blood there was no bullet hole. It was part of the suspend disbelief portion of films.

 

[dhermann1]

To me, the definitive continuity error (as opposed to editorial choices, like somebody dying in the end or not) is when they switch B-24's and B-25's interchangeably. For instance, a film about the Ploesti Raid, showing B-25's zipping by. Yes they looked similar, but please Mr. Film Editor, count the engines!

 

[Smithy]

In many war movies from the 60s, 70s and even 80s war was a blodless affair.
No blod was spilled in The Longest Day or The Riwer Kwai.
People get short and they just fall and roll around a little - no blod. Nice and clean.

That's a good point, as I recall when it came out the movie Bonnie and Clyde was one of the films that people got upset over because of the amount of blood they showed. Actually in a lot of films when someone got shot not only was there no blood there was no bullet hole. It was part of the suspend disbelief portion of films.

With apologies to the original thread poster for perhaps going slightly off topic here but Søren and John raise a very interesting point.

For a very long time the war movie-going public were raised on the "people falling over" or the "splash of red paint/tomato ketchup" approach to war violence.

That's why the opening sequence to "Saving Private Ryan" will be considered a benchmark in film history. Even though the public had seen war reported "live" with conflicts such as Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Balkans, amongst others, "Saving Private Ryan" was the first time that the public were placed inside of a major ground force engagement. Sure the film-going public had seen excessive gore in film such as the horror genre but there was always a fantasy element. But really up until "Saving Private Ryan" only those who had seen ground combat had seen what munitions do to the relatively "soft" human body and what military gunfire en masse looks and sounds like.

It's one of the reasons that sequence was so shattering and talked about upon it's release. I still remember upon walking out from "Saving Private Ryan" when seeing it at the cinema hearing someone say, "I had no idea bullets are so fast".

 

[John in Covina]

Peckinpah's violence was serious violence for the time but SPR was a leap into a whole other dimension.

 

[John in Covina]

To me, the definitive continuity error (as opposed to editorial choices, like somebody dying in the end or not) is when they switch B-24's and B-25's interchangeably. For instance, a film about the Ploesti Raid, showing B-25's zipping by. Yes they looked similar, but please Mr. Film Editor, count the engines!

I always cringe at the tanks they used in films. Understandable that it was tough to find the real tanks but sometimes it still bothers me...

 

[Undertow]

That's why the opening sequence to "Saving Private Ryan" will be considered a benchmark in film history...

My grandfather fought in that battle and after seeing SPR, commented on the opening beach head scene, "That's about as accurate as I think a film could be."

We asked him if it really sounded/looked like that, to which he remarked, "Well, yeah, although there were alot more guys gettin' killed next to you and alot more explosions." He also commented on the sound of the bullets, "Wow, I can't believe they were able to get that right."

Although he was impressed, he won't watch the film again - quite understandably.