Goofs for
Godfather, The (1972)
Page 16 of 34
Continuity: A glass of wine in the wedding scene.
Anachronisms: In several scenes wine bottles are shown with the DOC Italian wine classification designation shown on the bottle. DOC designations did not come in effect until the 1960s.
Continuity: The waiter fills Tom Hagen's glass twice within seconds during his dinner with Woltz.
Continuity: Kay's hands when she asks Michael when she will see him again.
Anachronisms: A building reflected in the window of the police car during the assassination of Barzini would not be built until more than ten years after the supposed time frame of the assassination.
Continuity: Level of wine in the glasses while Michael and Kay are having dinner following the attempted assassination of Vito Corleone.
Continuity: The windshield of Sonny's car is shattered by machine-gun fire, but is whole again by the time his bodyguards arrive.
Revealing mistakes: The bullet hole on McClusky's forehead appears before Michael fires the gun.
Anachronisms: 50 star U.S. flag in 1947 (on the building where the "peace conference" is held).
Anachronisms: At the airport at night, a swept tail Cessna 182 is shown. Production of this airplane didn't start until approximately the mid-1960s.
Continuity: A shot of Michael in the hospital walking past the camera is obviously reused a couple of minutes later.
Continuity: The placement of Moe Green's drink during his meeting with Michael.
Continuity: Fredo removes his sunglasses twice during Michael's meeting with Moe Green.
Crew or equipment visible: During Vito's funeral, when Michael stands up to talk to Tessio, the face of Mama can be briefly seen under his arm, tinted orange-red and chewing gum. After Roger Ebert reported this in his "Movie Answer Man" column in 2001, Francis Ford Coppola and Kim Aubry investigated: they confirmed that King was not supposed to be in the shot, but had gotten into it by an accidental reflection in the optics, probably off a filter (hence the tint) in the matte box.
Continuity: The level of wine in Vito Corleone's glass when he is discussing Barzini's move to kill Michael.
Continuity: When the dons meet, one of them sits back twice: once before and once after an edit.
Continuity: When Sonny is machine-gunned on the causeway, bullet holes appear at the roof line of his '47 Lincoln Continental, then disappear, then appear again.
Continuity: When Neri (the policeman) shoots the mobster at the end of the movie he fires seven shots.
Factual Errors: When Michael Corleone calls home after his father is shot, the dial on the pay phone is clearly out of alignment.
Continuity: During the string of shootings during the baptism, one guy is shot while running upstairs. Shot in the back, you can see blood and other stuff coming out of his back. While rolling down the stairs, however, the back of his shirt is untouched.
Continuity: When Michael kills Sollozzo and McClusky, the maitre d' is seen with a pipe in his mouth; in the next shot it is absent.
Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The exterior set-up shot for the summit meeting of all families is of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. While this seems like an unlikely place for a "family" meeting, it's an indication of how high their influence reaches.
Continuity: While Michael is talking to Apollonia's father after he has given her the necklace. The same two people pass by twice - once in a close-up of Apollonia and the other in a wider shot.
Revealing mistakes: The blood on the bed in the "horse head" scene. First it's there, then it disappears.
Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The punch to Michael's face broke his cheek bone which gave him a permanent black eye (and caused his sinuses to continually run - hence the use of a handkerchief all the time) until he got back to America and had surgery to fix it (Freddie says, "that doctor did a good job.")
Anachronisms: The movie's chronology indicates the time frame of the movie when Sonny is gunned down is late 1948 or 1949; however, he was listening to the 3 October 1951 radio broadcast of Russ Hodges calling the Dodgers-Giants playoff, a half-inning before Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World," specifically identifying the date of the murder as two years later than the movie's timeline indicates it should be.
Continuity: The amount of blood on Sonny after he is murdered on the causeway.
Anachronisms: Just before he is shot, Don Corleone shops for fruit at a shop. Cardboard boxes of Sunkist oranges in that shot feature graphics that weren't introduced until the Seventies. And in 1945 most oranges were still shipped in wooden crates.
Revealing mistakes: When Vito Corleone shows Johnny Fontane out of his office, we see an extra walk onto the frame from the left, but as soon as she sees Vito, she quickly lets out a little smile and backs away, as if she was in the wrong place.
Anachronisms: In the scene where Michael is arriving in Las Vegas, supposedly set in the very early 1950s, when he, Fredo, Tom and others are getting out of the car in the hotel driveway, two long-haired, bearded "hippie types" from the early '70s can be seen through the window in the lobby. (In the DVD commentary, Coppola admits that he is embarrassed by this oversight, but that the shot was done on the cheap by the second unit)
Continuity: In the wedding scene, immediately after Kay Adams meets Tom Hagan, the cigarette in her hand disappears and then reappears.
Crew or equipment visible: When Clemenza goes for a pee, crew reflected in side window of car in which Rocco has just shot Paulie.
Continuity: The gun that Sonny gets from the drawer in the dining room when Clemenza comes to the house following the attempt on the Don's life, is in his belt, disappears when he throws Clemenza against the counters and reappears as he turns around after talking to his wife.
Anachronisms: The stop sign in New England when Michael returns from Sicily is red and white. Stop signs were yellow and black at that time and did not change to red and white until the 1960s.
Continuity: When Michael announces that he will kill Sollozzo and Capt. McCluskey, the swelling in the left side of Michael's face (from having his jaw broken by McCluskey) disappears by the time he gets to his closing line, "It's not personal, Sonny. It's strictly business."
Continuity: While Michael is telling Kay the story of Luca Brasi, the gun and the contract, Michael is leaning back in his chair, but we cut to Kay on the other side of the table and Michael is leaning forward.
Audio/visual unsynchronised: When Carlo is strangled in the front seat of his car, and shatters the windshield with his foot, the glass is heard breaking before it is actually broken.
Anachronisms: In late 1945, the Empire State Building is shown with the 222-foot television antenna mast that it did not acquire until 1950.
Continuity: When the cop shoots the man at the top of the stairs during the baptism sequence, three shots are fired, but only two can be heard
