The Day of the Jackal

The Day of the Jackal (1973)

8 corrected entries

(8 votes)

Corrected entry: When the Jackal is stopped at the French border, he is sent to a room with dozens of blond guys who look like him. Despite this, he does not consequently act as if they are looking for him. As if he does not suspect the Police are looking for him, he goes into a hotel and checks in with his current name.

Correction: The Jackal crosses the border from Italy to France at 1:12:10. There are a number of people in the customs room having their luggage searched, some of whom are blonde men, some of whom are not. At this stage the police have only just discovered the Jackal's false identity and there is no alert out for him. He does not find out that the plot to kill DeGaulle has been blown until later in the film, and he has no reason to be suspicious of the people around him while having his luggage searched.

Corrected entry: At the beginning, just after the title credit the President's car is machine gunned and you see the back windshield shatter and disintegrate. Moments later the car arrives at the airport with the windshield intact. We see de Gaulle get out of the car with the intact rear windscreen.

Correction: I have just watched the film, paying close attention to the sequence of events in this scene. There are two Citroens shot up by the putative assassins. One has its rear windscreen shot out but we do not see the occupants - but the diminutive Mme Yvonne de Gaulle certainly is not one of them. This car is the one occupied by de Gaulle's bodyguards. Later, de Gaulle and his wife get out of the Citroen with the intact rear windscreen.

At 02:46 we see index plate of the rear car: 6352 KZ75. This is not the car DeGaulle enters. At 03.13 we see the index plate of his car: 5249 HU75. At 05:17 we see this car pull up at the airport with a slightly damaged rear windscreen. It was the other car, 6352 KZ75, that had its rear windscreen shot out, but we do not see the rear windscreen when it pulls up at the airport.

Corrected entry: In the French custom post, when The Jackal opens his suitcase for searching it has one strap. It has two straps when he closes it.

Correction: The Jackal has two suitcases, one with two buckle straps and another with only one buckle strap. When the French customs officer starts searching through the first suitcase with one strap he finds the Old Spice bottles, then it cuts to the next shot as he's finished with the Jackal's luggage, and closes the second suitcase with two straps. It is completely unnecessary to see it onscreen as the officer searches through two filled suitcases.

Super Grover

Corrected entry: After Col. Rolland plays the tape revealing the identity of the traitor, a minister walks from the room and passes Rolland who has one hand on his forehead. Cut to a rear view and now Rolland has both hands on the tape player.

Correction: Thats not Col Rolland playing the tape, its Claude Lebel-the detective.

Corrected entry: When the Jackal aims to assinate the French president, he misses. But why does the bullet explode in mid-flight? It doesn't hit anything.

Correction: The bullet actually hits the cobbled street, then explodes.

Corrected entry: The action takes place in 1963. At the hotel Madame de Montpelier writes down her date of birth as 1933 and speaks of her 19 year old son? She would have given birth aged 11.

Correction: She's a snooty aristocrat. As if she's going to admit her real age. She was probably born in the early twenties but has cut ten years off her age for appearances sake.

Corrected entry: When the Jackal boards the train for Paris, about 40 minutes from the end of the film, the engine of the train is blue; when the train arrives in Paris, the engine is red.

Correction: The train has had a change of engine en route. The original engine was diesel and arriving in Paris was electric. This would actually have happened but wasn't shown as it would serve no part in telling the story.

Yes but how many changes? It makes sense to change a locomotive from diesel to electric or vice versa if the railway infrastructure would require this change. On usual train routes the locmotive is changed once from diesel to electric or vice versa. On few ocasions it would be possible to change the locomotive from diesel to electric and then back to diesel so two changes on one train route in total. But it wouldn't make any sense at all to change the electric locmotive with another electric locomotive. This is a continuity error in the movie.

Corrected entry: When the Jackal arrives at the house used to shoot at the president, he unhooks his leg (folded behind him as part of his disguise) and he is wearing just a sock. as he is walking up the stairs to the room he also has a sock but, while sitting waiting for the president to arrive, we see he is now wearing two shoes. Where did the second shoe come from?

christian467

Correction: This is explained in the book. The shoe is strapped to the inside of his strapped up leg. He uses mocassins so they will fold flat.

It is explained in the book but not in the film, which makes it a legitimate movie mistake. Further, that is not a moccasin he is wearing. It would not "fold flat."

Plot hole: An important plot point (in the book and the film) is that Charles Calthrop - thought to be the Jackal, at that stage - played some mysterious part in the 1961 assassination of Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of The Dominican Republic, and rumours of his involvement came to the attention of MI6 and Special Branch, leading to the accidental exposure of the Jackal's false passport. In fact there is no mystery at all about the assassination of Trujillo and there were no shadowy foreigners involved. It was organised by Trujillo's own senior aides, amongst them General Juan Tomás Díaz, Antonio de la Maza, Amado Garcia Guerroro and General Antonio Imbert Barrera. The gunman was later identified as Luis Aniama Tio. All the conspirators except Tio were arrested, tortured, and shot. There was no panicked evacuation of foreigners who were involved with Trujillo's regime, and no reason for them to be concerned - the government did not fall and Trujillo's brother Hector took over as President, ruling in a brutal and totalitarian manner for a further eight years. Any rumours of a mysterious Englishman would have been dismissed out of hand and would not have made it onto even the lowest level filing system anywhere in Whitehall.

PEDAUNT

More mistakes in The Day of the Jackal

Lebel: It's obvious that the Jackal has been tipped off all along, and yet he's decided to go ahead, regardless. He's simply challenged the whole lot of us.
Minister: Are you really suggesting that there's a leak from inside this room?
Lebel: I can't say. But we think that the Jackal is now in Paris with a new name and a new face, probably masquerading as a Danish schoolteacher.

More quotes from The Day of the Jackal

Trivia: The Jackal demands $500,000 (US) to assassinate De Gaulle, which seems like a modest amount for such a dangerous job. However, when you take inflation into account that's the equivalent in 2024 money of over $5m. No wonder his putative employers are surprised.

More trivia for The Day of the Jackal

Chosen answer: According to Wikipedia: "Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants made by combining two high explosives: nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, i.e. it is a double-base propellant. However, Cordite N, a triple-base propellant is also used. Cordite is classified as an explosive, but it is normally used as a propellant for guns and rockets." So yes, it works.

Twotall

Answer: Yes, cordite is classified a an explosive, but it's rarely used as such. It's a common propellant for artillery shells etc. Realistically, the Jackal would have used a plastic explosive such C4 or Semtex for a bomb. And the mercury fulminate tipped rounds are a fantasy, it's so unstable, it would explode before it had left the barrel.

stiiggy

More questions & answers from The Day of the Jackal

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.