How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Rear Window.
Quote #1
STELLA: I should have been a Gypsy fortune teller instead of an insurance company nurse. I got a nose for trouble—can smell it 10 miles away.
Cleverness in this movie is often defined by making intuitive leaps instead of drawing direct connections. At its most extreme, it's just a feeling or instinct, as with Stella's "nose for trouble."
Quote #2
JEFF: I've seen bickering and family quarrels and mysterious trips at night, and knives and saws and ropes, and now since last evening, not a sign of the wife. How do you explain that?
LISA: Maybe she died.
JEFF: Where's the doctor? Where's the undertaker?
Good questions. These are the kinds of challenges that help to rule out alternative explanations, eliminating other ideas of what might have happened until the only conclusion is murder.
Quote #3
LISA: What's a logical explanation for a woman taking a trip with no luggage?
JEFF: That she didn't know she was going on a trip and where she was going she wouldn't need any luggage.
A lot of the dialogue in this part of the movie involves putting two and two together, watching Jeff and Lisa slowly figure out what's going on. In terms of filmmaking, it follows an important rule: show, don't tell. We see how smart Jeff and Lisa are from the way they connect the dots.