22 quotes
Suspicion and Mystery in Rear Window
Lt. Doyle
Didn't see the killing or the body. How do you know there was a murder?
Jeff
Because everything this fellow's done has been suspicious: trips at night in the rain, knifes, saws, trunks with rope, and now this wife that isn't there anymore.
Lt. Doyle
I admit it all has a mysterious sound. Could be any number of things - murder's the least possible.
Jeff
Well, don't tell me he's an unemployed magician amusing the neighborhood with his sleight-of-hand. Now don't tell me that.
Lt. Doyle
It's too obvious, a stupid way to commit murder in full view of fifty windows? Then sit over there smoking a cigar, waiting for the police to come and pick him up?
Jeff
Officer, go do your duty. Go pick him up!
Lt. Doyle
Jeff, you've got a lot to learn about homicide. Why, morons have committed murder so shrewdly it's taken a hundred trained police minds to catch them. That salesman wouldn't just knock his wife off after dinner and toss her in the trunk and put her in storage.
Jeff
I'll bet it's been done.
Lt. Doyle
Most everything's been done - under panic. This is a thousand to one shot. He's still sitting around the apartment. That man's not panicked.
Jeff
You think I made all this up, huh?
Marriage and Boredom in Urban Life
Jeff
You've got to get me out of here. Six weeks sitting in a two-room apartment with nothing to do but look out the window at the neighbors. ..If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something drastic...like what? I'm gonna get married and then I'll never be able to go anywhere.
Editor
It's about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome, bitter old man.
Jeff
Yeah, can't you just see me, rushin home to a hot apartment to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal, the nagging wife.
Editor
Jeff, wives don't nag, they discuss.
Jeff
Is that so, that so? Maybe in the high rent district they discuss, in my neighborhood they still nag.
Editor
Well, um, you know best.
An Unusual Journey into Human Emotions
Taglines
The most unusual and intimate journey into human emotions ever filmed !
Seeking Attention in a Relationship
Lisa
How far does a girl have to go before you notice her?
Jeff
Well if she's pretty enough, she doesn't have to go anywhere. She just has to be.
Lisa
Well, ain't I? Pay attention to me.
Jeff
Well, I'm, I'm not exactly on the other side of the room.
Lisa
Your mind is. When I want a man, I want all of you.
Reflections on Privacy and Observation
Stella
The New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the work house...They got no windows in the work house. You know, in the old days, they used to put your eyes out with a red-hot poker. Any of those bikini bombshells you're always watchin worth a red-hot poker? Oh dear, we've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes, sir. How's that for a bit of home-spun philosophy?
Suspicion and Cleanup in Rear Window
Lisa
What's he doing? Cleaning house?
Jeff
He's washing and scrubbing down the bathroom walls.
Stella
Must've splattered a lot.
Stella
Come on, that's what were all thinkin'. He killed her in there, now he has to clean up those stains before he leaves.
Lisa
Stella... your choice of words!
Stella
Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin yet.
Experience the Thrill of Rear Window
Taglines
See It! - If your nerves can stand it after Psycho!
Shared Concerns Between Two Characters
Jeff
Don't, don't you ever have any problems?
Lisa
I have one now.
Jeff
So do I.
Lisa
Tell me about it.
Jeff
Why, why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?
Lisa
He likes the way his wife welcomes him home.
Jeff
Oh no. No, no, no. Not this salesman's wife. And why didn't he go to work today?
Lisa
Homework. It's more interesting.
Jeff
What's interesting about a butcher knife and a small saw wrapped in newspaper? Huh?
Lisa
Nothing, thank heaven.
Jeff
Why hasn't he been in his wife's bedroom all day?
Lisa
I wouldn't dare answer that.
Jeff
Well, listen. I'll answer it, Lisa, there's something terribly wrong.
Lisa
And I'm afraid it's with me.
[Lisa leaves him to go to the couch and smoke a cigarette.]
Jeff
What do you think?
Lisa
Something too frightful to utter.
Jeff
He went out a few minutes ago in his undershirt. He hasn't come back yet. That would be a terrible job to tackle. Just how would you start to cut up a human body?
Lisa
Jeff, I'll be honest with you. You're beginning to scare me a little.
Anticipating Trouble in a Constrained Environment
Stella
I got a nose for trouble. I can smell it ten miles away...I can smell trouble right here in this apartment. First you smash your leg. Then you get to lookin out the window. See things you shouldn't see. Trouble. I can see you in court now, surrounded by a bunch of lawyers in double-breasted suits. You're pleading: Judge, it was only a little bit of innocent fun. I love my neighbors like a father. And the Judge says, Well, congratulations, you've just given birth to three years in Dannemora.
Jeff
Yeah, right now I'd welcome trouble...You know, I think you're right. I think there is going to be trouble around here.
Stella
...What kind of trouble?
Jeff
Lisa Fremont.
Stella
Are you kidding? She's a beautiful young girl and you're a reasonably healthy young man.
Jeff
She expects me to marry her.
Stella
That's normal.
Jeff
I don't want to.
Stella
That's abnormal.
Jeff
I'm just not ready for marriage.
Stella
Every man's ready for marriage when the right girl comes along. And Lisa Fremont is the right girl for any man with half a brain who can get one eye open.
Jeff
Oh, she's all right.
Stella
What did you do? Have a fight?
Jeff
No.
Stella
Her father loading up the shotgun?
Jeff
What? Please, Stella.
Stella
It's happened before you know. Some of the world's happiest marriages have, uh, started under the gun, as you might say.
Jeff
No, she's just not the girl for me.
Stella
Yeah, she's only perfect.
Jeff
She's too perfect. She's too talented, she's too beautiful. She's too sophisticated. She's too everything but what I want.
Stella
Is, um, what you want something you can discuss?
Jeff
Well, it's very simple, Stella. She belongs to that rarified atmosphere of Park Avenue, you know. Expensive restaurants, literary cocktail parties...Can you imagine her tramping around the world with a camera bum who never has more than a week's salary in the bank? If she was only ordinary.
Stella
You ever gonna get married?
Jeff
I'll probably get married one of these days, and when I do, it's gonna be to someone who thinks of life not just as a new dress, and a lobster dinner, the latest scandal. I need a woman who's willing...to go anywhere and do anything and love it. So the honest thing for me to do is just to call the whole thing off and let her find somebody else.
Stella
Yeah, I can hear you now. Get out of my life. You're a perfectly wonderful woman - you're too good for me. Look, Mr. Jefferies, I'm not an educated woman, but I can tell you one thing. When a man and a woman see each other and like each other they ought to come together - wham! Like a couple of taxis on Broadway, not sit around analyzing each other like two specimens in a bottle.
Jeff
There's an intelligent way to approach marriage.
Stella
Intelligence! Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence. Hah! Modern marriage!
Creativity and Relationships Explored in Dialogue
Lisa
Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that? It's utterly beautiful. Wish I could be creative.
[Listening to the composer play his piano]
Jeff
Oh sweetie, you are. You have a great talent for creating difficult situations.
Lisa
I do?
Jeff
Sure. Staying here all night, uninvited.
Lisa
Surprise is the most important element of attack. And besides, you're not up on your private eye literature. When they're in trouble, it's always their Girl Friday who gets them out of it.
Jeff
Well, is she the girl that saves him from the clutches of the seductive showgirls and the overpassionate daughters of the rich?
Lisa
The same.
Jeff
That's the one, huh? It's funny, he never ends up marrying her, does he, huh? That's strange.
Lisa
Weird.
Suspicion and Interpretation Through the Window
Jeff
I've seen it through that window. I've seen bickering and family quarrels and mysterious trips at night, knives and saws and ropes, and now since last evening, not a sign of the wife. All right, now you tell me where she is...
Lisa
Maybe he's leaving his wife, I don't know, I don't care. Lots of people have knives and saws and ropes around their houses and lots of men don't speak to their wives all day. Lots of wives nag and men hate them and trouble starts. But very very few of them end up in murder if that's what you're thinking.
Jeff
It's pretty hard for you to keep away from that word isn't it?
Lisa
You could see all that he did, couldn't you?
Jeff
Of course, I...
Lisa
You could see because the shades were up and, and he walked along the corridor and the street and the back yard. Oh Jeff, do you think a murderer would let you see all that? That he wouldn't pull the shades down and hide behind them?
Jeff
Just where he's being clever. He's being nonchalant about things...
Lisa
Oh, and that's where you're not being clever. A murderer would never parade his crime in front of an open window.
Jeff
Why not?
Lisa
Why, for all you know, there's probably something a lot more sinister going on behind those windows.
[pointing to the newlyweds' window]
Jeff
Where? Oh, no comment.
Fashion and Survival in Unlikely Situations
Jeff
Did you ever get shot at? Did you ever get run over? Did you ever get sandbagged at night because somebody got unfavorable publicity from your camera? Did you ever...those high-heels, they'll be great in the jungle and the nylons and those six ounce lingerie...
Lisa
Three!
Jeff
All right. Three! They'll make a big hit in Finland just before you freeze to death?
Lisa
Well, if there's one thing I know, it's how to wear the proper clothes.
Jeff
Yeah, yeah. Well try and find a raincoat in Brazil, even when it isn't raining. Lisa. In this job, you carry one suitcase, your home is the available transportation. You don't sleep very much, you bathe less, and sometimes the food that you eat is made from things that you couldn't even look at when they're alive.
Lisa
Jeff, you don't have to be deliberately repulsive just to impress me I'm wrong.
Jeff
Deliberately repulsive! I'm just trying to make it sound good. You just have to face it, Lisa, you're not meant for that kind of a life. Few people are.
Lisa
You're too stubborn to argue with.
Jeff
I'm not stubborn - I'm just truthful.
Lisa
I know, a lesser man would have told me it was one long holiday - and I would have been awakened to a rude disillusionment.
Jeff
Oh, well now, wait a minute. Now wait a minute. If you want to get vicious on this, I'll be very happy to accommodate you.
Lisa
No, I don't particularly want that. So that's it. You won't stay here and I can't go with you.
[She rises and moves away.]
Jeff
It would be the wrong thing.
Lisa
You don't think either one of us could ever change?
Jeff
Right now, it doesn't seem so.
Lisa
I'm in love with you. I don't care what you do for a living. I'd just like to be part of it somehow. It's deflating to find out the only way I can be part of it is to take out a subscription to your magazine. I guess I'm not the girl I thought I was.
[preparing to leave]
Jeff
There's nothing wrong with you, Lisa. You've got this town in the palm of your hand.
Lisa
Not quite it seems. Goodbye, Jeff.
[She turns and starts for the doorway]
Jeff
You mean, Good night.
Lisa
I mean what I said.
Jeff
Well, Lisa, couldn't we just, uh, couldn't we just keep things status quo?
Lisa
Without any future?
Jeff
Well, when am I gonna see you again?
Lisa
Not for a long time...'...at least not until tomorrow night.
[pause]
Searching for Clues in the Garden
Lisa
The last thing Mrs. Thorwald would leave behind would be her wedding ring. Stella, do you ever leave yours at home?
Stella
The only way somebody would get that would be to chop off my - finger. Let's go down to the garden and find out what's buried there.
Lisa
Why not? I always wanted to meet Mrs. Thorwald.
Ethics of Observation in Rear Window
Jeff
You know, much as I hate to give Thomas J. Doyle too much credit, he might have gotten ahold of something when he said that was pretty private stuff going on out there. I wonder if it is ethical to watch a man with binoculars and a long-focus lens. Do you, do you suppose it's ethical even if you prove that he didn't commit a crime?
Lisa
I'm not much on rear-window ethics.
Jeff
Of course, they can do the same thing to me. Watch me like a bug under a glass if they want to.
Lisa
Jeff, you know if someone came in here, they wouldn't believe what they'd see.
Jeff
What?
Lisa
You and me with long faces, plunged into despair because we find out a man didn't kill his wife. We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known. You'd think we could be a little bit happier that the poor woman is alive and well. Whatever happened to that old saying: Love thy neighbor'?
Jeff
You know, I think I'll start reviving that tomorrow. I'll begin with Miss Torso.
Lisa
Not if I have to move in to an apartment across the way and do the Dance of the Seven Veils every hour. The show's over for tonight. Preview of coming attractions.
[She lowers the blinds; She picks up her overnight kit of lingerie]
The Impact of a Single Witness
Taglines
It only takes one witness to spoil the perfect crime.
The Complexity of Private Lives
Lt. Doyle
Lars Thorwald is no more a murderer than I am.
Jeff
You mean to say you can explain everything that's gone on over there and is still going on?
Lt. Doyle
No, and neither can you. That's a secret, private world you're looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private that they couldn't possibly explain in public.
Lisa
Like disposing of their wives.
Lt. Doyle
Get that idea out of your mind. It will only lead in the wrong direction.
Jeff
What about the knife and the saw?
Lt. Doyle
Did you ever own a saw?
Jeff
At home in the garage, I had...
Lt. Doyle
How many people did you cut up with it? Or with the couple of hundred knives you probably owned in your life? Your logic is backward.
Lisa
You can't ignore the wife disappearing and the trunk and the jewelry.
Lt. Doyle
I checked the railroad station. He bought a ticket. Ten minutes later, he put his wife on the train. Destination? Meritsville. The witnesses are that deep.
Lisa
That might have been a woman, but it couldn't have been Mrs. Thorwald. That jewelry...
Lt. Doyle
Look, Miss Fremont. That uh, feminine intuition stuff sells magazines but in real life, it's still a fairy tale. I don't know how many wasted years I've spent tracking down leads based on female intuition.
Lt. Doyle
Do you tell your landlord everything?
[looking at Lisa's open overnight bag]
Jeff
I told you to be careful, Tom.
Lt. Doyle
If I'd have been careful piloting that reconnaissance plane during the war, you wouldn't have had the chance to take the pictures that won you a medal and a good job and fame and money.
The Fear of Being Watched
L.B. Jeffries
That's no ordinary look. That's the kind of a look a man gives when he's afraid somebody might be watching him.
[regarding Thorwald]
The Predictability of Women’s Choices
Lisa
It doesn't make sense to me...Women aren't that unpredictable...A woman has a favorite handbag and it always hangs on her bedpost where she can get at it easily. And then all of a sudden, she goes away on a trip and leaves it behind. Why?
Jeff
Because she didn't know she was going on a trip. And where she's going she wouldn't need the handbag.
Lisa
Yes, but only her husband would know that. And that jewelry. Women don't keep their jewelry in a purse, getting all twisted and scratched and tangled up.
Jeff
Well, do they hide it in their husbands clothes?
Lisa
They do not. And they don't leave it behind either. Why, a woman going anywhere but the hospital would always take makeup, perfume, and jewelry...That's basic equipment. And you don't leave it behind in your husband's drawer in your favorite handbag.
Desperation and Demands in Confrontation
Thorwald
What do you want from me? Your friend, the girl, could have turned me in. Why didn't she? What is it you want? A lot of money? I don't have any money. Say something. Say something. Tell me what you want! Can you get me that ring back?
[entering Jeff's apartment]
Jeff
No!
Thorwald
Tell her to bring it back.
Jeff
I can't. The police have it by now.