Some may find it distasteful but movie lovers should give their utmost thanks that Hitchcock was such an incorrigible peeping Tom.

To some extent, every one of his best works involves people watching or being watched; in some it’s rife: The Lady Vanishes, Notorious, Spellbound, Vertigo, North By Northwest… and, of course, Psycho.

But never was voyeurism made so overt and integral to the plot as in Rear Window, the film that made a dirty old man of Jimmy Stewart.

He’s L.B. Jeffries, the plaster-casted photographer who, after six weeks stuck in his apartment, does nothing but dodge commitment questions about his “too perfect” girlfriend Lisa (the luminous Kelly) and spy on his neighbours.

It’s a sweltering summer, so everyone has the blinds up and their lives on display.

A composer works on his masterpiece. One couple sleeps on the fire escape while the newlyweds next door barely come up for air. Sad spinster Miss Lonely Hearts pines for male company - never a problem for the nubile Miss Torso.

But it’s the salesman opposite who grabs L.B.’s attention. One day, his bed-ridden wife is nagging him as usual. The next, the nagging stops. And her bed is empty.

L.B. suspects foul play. Yet while he has Lisa convinced, his detective pal Doyle (Wendell Corey) is sceptical. All the evidence points to the shady Mr Thorwald (Burr) being innocent. And without a body, they have no case.

But what they do have is the case of a dog who knew too much…

Ironic that the man who would play Detective Ironside should come under suspicion from a sleuth in a wheelchair.

Hitch would have enjoyed that almost as much as he enjoyed toying with both characters and audiences. But unlike some of his films, this is no lesson in cold observation.

There’s real empathy in the way the subplots unfold to the extent that the neighbours’ mini-dramas create as much intrigue as the big mystery, which is absorbing while never completely convincing.

Logic goes out the window more than once but, as is Hitch’s wont, the suspense sneaks up on you, especially when Lisa volunteers to have a snoop round Thorwald’s gaff.

A direct remake in 1998 updated the story to acknowledge the advance of technology but was essentially a vehicle (no pun intended) for the paralysed Christopher Reeve.

The set-up was given a further revamp a decade later in Disturbia with Shia Leboeuf as a fully mobile teen under house arrest.

Shot entirely from L.B.’s apartment and at great expense to Paramount (the single set was the biggest they’d ever built at the time), this is audacious, cheeky and unmistakably Hitchcockian fun.

Elliott Noble