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how did he know he was an accountant?(woman travelling with him at first

posted 15 years ago by PeterBlues
4 replies | jump to latest

when he was travelling with the first woman, earlier in the movie, she asks how he could have known the man she was talking about was an accountant before she had even said it. then he said "a guess" or something. so how did he know?

the land filled with snow,
nobody around i saw at all,
seemed like such a quiet noon,
and as i looked beyond where i stood,
in there in the woods, by an open woodshed door,
stood a guy with a red costume, and a pile of stuff stored,
he was working away,
going on about his stuff in the early december day,
did he realise i saw,
strange, hip things, seemed to be going on,
like he was preparing to make a deliever of the goods,
beyond the snowy pine trees, where a little woodshed stood.

[–] WarpedRecord 15 years ago

When he passed the couple on the road earlier, he said the guy was either an accountant or a lawyer (I think that was the other job), then he settles on accountant. I think it was just trucker's intuition based on all the stuff in their car. What I didn't catch was Quid telling her that he thought her husband was an accountant.

[–] mnoe 13 years ago

What I didn't catch was Quid telling her that he thought her husband was an accountant.

Then later in the film, you get to hear from a radio news report why she went so paranoid about Quid. It turns out Mrs. Accountant and her family had been on the road because they were being threatened and violently harassed by some union truck drivers -- they were trying to make themselves scarce.

So in her scene with Quid in the truck she begins wondering if this particular truck driver is one of her husband's enemies when he makes the offhand accountant remark, and she wonders if it is a coincidence that he was nearby when she needed a lift. Then Quid starts rambling about "a game" involving killing and disposing of body parts, and it freaks her the rest of the way out.

It's in the same radio report that we learn the Jamie Lee Curtis character's last name and that she's an "heiress" in addition to being a diplomat's daughter.

One of the jokes of the film is that Quid doesn't seem to make these connections, sort of letting the radio news wash over him unless it directly mentions the serial killings.

last 2 dvds: Behind Locked Doors (1948) & La belle noiseuse (1991)

[–] hackerman6731 10 years ago

What really made me mad about Mrs Day was how at the end when all the characters show up, she tells the police that he tried to push her of the cliff.

[–] zachanscom 10 years ago

because he's a freaking genius. the movie drives this point into your heads every chance it gets. quote shakespeare, makes rapid deductions. well i appreciate the subversion of a common hitchcock trope. an everyman who isn't an ignorant dope.