When Max Vatan shoots Hobar, his head is thrown back twice.
During WWII, cars in Britain had white paint added to the edge of their wings/fenders to aid visibility to other road users, as the car headlights were masked. The cars in the film were not painted this way.
When Max (Brad Pitt) is at the party at his home, after speaking with Frank he walks over to Margaret and says "Stand down, flight Lieutenant." He mispronounces Lieutenant; in Canada it's pronounced "lef-tenant" not "loo-tenant" as it is in the United States military. All Canadian Forces Lieutenants -- either Navy, Army, or Air Force -- are pronounced this way.
The "Lysander" RAF recon plane had to be started with a large generator that the required several ground crew to operate. Brad Pitt turns the aircraft off in France. he would have been trapped, not able to restart his Lysander aircraft. Also at the end of the film when trying to escape.
During the house party the curtains were open and the doors open to the back garden. This would contravene the wartime blackout regulations.
Several SS officers are seen wearing the famed Hugo Boss designed Black SS Uniform of the 1930s with the Swastika left arm band. This Uniform was discontinued at the beginning of the war in 1939 and all SS uniforms were the field green and grey like the Wehrmacht / Army.
Marianne calls Max Le Québécois (which he is actually not, as he is Ontarian). But even so, at that time, residents of Québec didn't commonly refer themselves as Québécois or Quebecers but as French-Canadians. It is only in the 60s that this differentiation of identity emerged.
She is, however, referring affectionately/jokingly to his "bad" French which she remarks "has a Quebec accent" instead of the mission-required Paris one. The reference, then, is a regional phonetic one, not a political one.
The music being played in the background at the ambassador's party in Casablanca is the second movement of Haydn's Emperor Quartet, which contains the melody of the Austro-Hungarian National Hymn of 1797, which was to become the German National Hymn in 1922. Playing the Haydn quartet would not have been regarded inappropriate in terms of protocol as it existed 125 years before being used for the 'Deutschland Über Alles' hymn. The Haydn composition is not a 'lounge version' of the hymn, as the hymn was derived from the quartet.
The bombers attacking London in the house party scene are Heinkel He 177s, which were not thought to have flown over England. Although the majority of HE177s were used in the Russian Front, several were used in England as part of Operation Steinbock in 1944.
When Marianne writes the letter to her daughter that will be read in the future, and only in case of Marianne's death, some claimed that it wouldn't make sense for her to say that she is "your mother, Marianne Vatan," and that she should have given her real "German" name. However, we don't know for certain that she was German; she could have been French. In addition, it could be that she gave her name as Marianne Vatan because that was how she regarded herself---she was no longer who she was before.
The parachute vertical descent is too slow in the opening scene.
Marianne tells Vatan that the German officer is reading the newspaper and did not see him; Vatan agrees despite the fact that the officer looked straight at him and that an entirely different person was indeed reading his newspaper. He then follows the very German officer, who did see and recognize him.
In Max's photo album, there is a wedding photo dated "24th October 1942", and then a photo of Max holding Ana dated "July 1943". This would mean that Marianne became pregnant right when they got married. After Ana's dramatic birth scene during an air raid, the movie picks up "One year later", which would be around Summer 1944. However, there are daffodils in the park next to the downed German bomber when Max and Marianne are having a picnic, which means it is actually early Spring. The budding leaves on the trees in the establishing shots do seem to indicate that it is more like Spring and not Summer 1944. In terms of preparations for the D-Day (which was in June 1944) and Max's supposed secret mission, Spring time would make more sense for the movie's timeline of events. Instead of "One year later", it would have been more accurate to say "About nine months later", "or "The next spring", or "Three months before D-Day..."
Obvious CG green screen when Vatan lands in the opening scene.
Vatan is supposed to have a meeting in the mess, which is a building or a room providing meals and recreational facilities for members of the armed forces; he is not seen in a mess but in an operational building and room.
In the final scenes, when the camera pans around in the car to show baby Anna, you can see she is being rocked by someone/something up until the camera stops panning and settles on her.
During the bombing raid, there can be seen tracer rounds that have too short an interval between them to be from any gun used by the British in defense of the British Isles.
The events of the movie take place form 1942-1945. In the scenes set in London we see bombing raids being carried out by the Luftwaffe. However, bombing raids of the scale seen in the movie after May 1941 did not happen in London.
When Max was visiting the RAF group captain (Guy Sangster), Sangster used the term "triple A" in reference to antiaircraft artillery. This term was not used by the Canadians or British during the war; "ack ack" (phonetic alphabet at the time for "AA"), "flak" or "Archie" were the terms used.
The wedding cake clearly shows a white fondant or marzipan icing, which was illegal in Britain during the war. Wedding cakes were plain, if you were lucky enough to procure enough ingredients. There were fake plaster cakes used for photographs that covered an unfrosted cake underneath, but the cake is clearly shown cut into. Also, there is no way any cake would have been left on a plate uneaten.
The frying pan Marianne uses to serve Max's breakfast eggs is a modern one with a stainless steel base clearly visible. The taps in Max and Marianne's bathroom are Supataps which were not invented until the 1950s.
Max starts his late 1930s or early 1940s car with an ignition key starter. A key and either a dash button or floor pedal would have been needed before 1949.
As Max walks down the hall of the cafe he tells a Moroccan waiter "There's some noise back there... I think someone is choking". Before the waiter rounds the corner to see the legs of the Nazi officer you hear the commotion and shock in the waiters voice.
At the very end of the conversation between Max Vatan and Cpt. Adam Hunter you can see Brad Pitt's lips moving but his lines are not audible.
Vatan's jaw is still moving and yet he has finished talking when he says "the German ambassador" in a reversed shot at 57'13".
In the opening scene, as Brad Pitt's character moves his left arm to return the binoculars to the coat pocket, then to take his hand out of the pocket, a white shadow briefly appears twice on the right side of the screen parallel to his arm movement, at 03:10 and 03:14, suggesting this is a sound stage and something shiny is catching the lights.
Max and Marianne left Casablanca one evening to go and sit on the dunes in the desert, but the desert is at least a two-day drive so this would be impossible. Also, one cannot easily get to the top of the dunes like they did; one would need (a) a guide and (b) a camel.
When Marianne and Max are having lunch, it is so hot that Marianne is sweating profusely. However, Casablanca (along with Las Palmas where some of the filming took place) has one of the best climates in the world, being temperate all year around. There is no hot humidity that would make one sweat indoors and in the shade, especially around late September and early October when the events of the movie take place.
When Max and Marianne are sitting in the desert, alone, she asks him "Tell me about Medicine Hat." Located in southeastern Alberta, Medicine Hat is over 3,000km away from Ottawa. One would have had to be extremely eccentric or wealthy in 1930s Canada to have made that journey more than a few times.
In real life Marianne would probably have been tested without informing Max.
If Marianne is a Nazi spy, setting up a Nazi mission to make her kill a German defector together with a British secret agent, is so unlikely that it can only be explained as part of a bigger Nazi plan. Getting pregnant doesn't help her to act freely.
Marianne confesses to be a traitor because of the threat on her child. But she began to impersonate the real Marianne long before her child's birth.
They made love the day before the attack at the Embassy. It doesn't explain how long it took for them to reach Gibraltar. When they tell Max that she has been cleared to come to England. He refers to the fact that they have been waiting over 3 weeks for her clearance. Thus, she could have been 4-6 weeks pregnant when they got married. Making the time line more reasonable.
The British Colonel states that the traitor has to be executed immediately by the hand of her husband. Yet, when he is arguing with Max in front of the airplane Max just tried to steal, he bitterly complains that Max should not have killed the German spy network ("we could have interrogated them," he says). The same would apply to Marianne: she has much to say. Incidentally, during World War II, the British routinely "turned" all agents they captured on British soil. Those who refused to cooperate were either executed or imprisoned.
When Max is being informed that his wife is being accused of being a spy he pronounces her last name in two different ways during this conversation. Surely he would not mispronounce his wife's name.
Brad Pitt says "Mary-Arn" for a French-sounding pronunciation, but in French, the final syllable in Marianne rhymes with "man" just as it does in English.
To be precise, the name Marianne in French is pronounced "Mah-Ree-Ahn".
To be precise, the name Marianne in French is pronounced "Mah-Ree-Ahn".