It is today considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s strongest films.

Commercially successful on original release, it proved that Hitchcock was “at the top of his form as master of the dark, melodramatic suspense thriller” as Donald Spoto remarks in his book, “The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock”.

Critical reception was mixed on original release - receiving praise for its performances, clever and effective use of suspense and even winning a prize from the Screen Directors Guild, while equally criticised for its story.

Modern reviews are overwhelmingly positive, in comparison, with Roger Ebert considering it to be a “first-rate thriller” and one of Hitchcock’s five best films, even adding it to his Great Movies list.

David Keyes, writing at Cinephile in 2002 considered it to be a seminal film in its genre, one that is “a crowd-pleasing popcorn flick” but also “one of the original shells for identity-inspired mystery thrillers, in which natural human behaviour is the driving force behind the true macabre… (with) classic endeavours like “Fargo” and “A Simple Plan” (which) seem directly fuelled by this concept…”