In one of the truly great later Hitchcocks, James Stewart plays a retired cop with a terror of heights who's hired by Tom Helmore to follow his suicidal wife, Kim Novak. Stewart falls in love with the enigmatic blonde, but can't prevent her falling to her death. Some months later he spots a woman (also played by Novak) who bears an uncanny resemblance to the dead woman, and is drawn into a web of deceit and obsession. Novak gives her greatest performance in a demanding dual role, while Stewart shatters his all-American Mr Nice Guy persona with a disturbingly dark and complex characterisation. A hallucinatory movie - the glistening San Francisco locations give both place and events a dreamlike quality - this remains one of the most painful depictions of romantic fatalism in all of cinema.

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.