Shining Through

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Shining Through Goofs/Mistakes

Movie Goof (factual errors): In scene 5 on the DVD (USO dance), Linda's voice-over from the BBC broadcast refers to news of "American boys were being lost by the thousands on Pacific islands with names like Corregidor and Bataan". Bataan is a peninsula, and even if Linda hadn't known it at the time of the "death march", she surely would have known it by the time of the narration decades later.
Movie Goof (anachronisms): From the very beginning of the war, Leland wears a Combat Infantryman Badge. It was created by the War Department on October 27, 1943.
Movie Goof (anachronisms): During the dance, Leland wears the Army Blue Uniform, which was adopted July 1, 1957, with a Sam Browne belt, which was adopted after 1942.
Movie Goof (anachronisms): The flag in Leland's office has 50 stars. It should have 48.
Movie Goof (anachronisms): Franz-Otto Dietrich is going to a concert with Linda Voss. He mentions that the conductor is Herbert Von Karajan. Karajan was born in 1908 and therefore in his mid-thirties during the war. The conductor in the movie is quite old and has gray hair. In a photo from 1938 Karajan's hair was still jet-black.
Movie Goof (factual errors): Linda states that they heard the radio broadcast telling of the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning (they were still in bed in the midst of breakfast dishes), however they were in New York at the time, so it would have been early afternoon New York time.
Movie Goof (plot holes): When Leland finds Linda in the laundry basket, Ed and "Sunflower" clean her up, get her dressed, and give her a pill for the pain. Throughout this scene, she is fairly incoherent, and not wearing any gloves. In the train, Leland notices the bump in her glove and finds the microfilm hidden there. In the closing dialogue from the interview scene, Linda takes credit for hiding the microfilm in her glove based on another one of her pearls of wisdom from previous Hollywood war/espionage movies. That seems highly unlikely given her state in the earlier scene.
Movie Goof (factual errors): Right after Pearl Harbor, Linda's narration says that Ed Leland's real identity as a member of the O.S.S. was revealed when he appeared in uniform. The O.S.S. did not exist before Pearl Harbor and was not officially founded by Donovan and Roosevelt until June of 1942. Ed Leland would have worked for any number of government agencies coordinating intelligence info prior to the war, not Donovan. And Donovan himself didn't enter the intelligence game until Roosevelt made him Coordinator of Information in July 1941.
Movie Goof (plot holes): No intelligence agency, no matter how desperate, would send a secretary behind enemy lines with no training, or a senior officer who can't speak the language.
Movie Goof (anachronisms): The street agitator makes references to Franklin Delano Rosenberg. Beyond possible Jewish connotations, the name Rosenberg would have been meaningless in 1940. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's espionage trial was in the 1950s.
Movie Goof (errors made by characters, possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Linda references The Fighting 69th (1940) she states the film stars Cary Grant and Brenda Marshall, but neither actor appears in that film.
Movie Goof (continuity error): Just before Leland enters the Customs Hut, his cap displays all of the correct insignia. When he enters, the eagle has disappeared.
Movie Goof (factual errors): When Margrete ushers Linda into her home, her mother is playing Chopin's "Andante Spianato" and "Grand Polonnaise" on the piano. She is a Nazi sympathizer, so she probably wouldn't play music by a Polish and French composer.