Rear Window

(1954) PG Sunday, 1.30pm, BBC2 There are plenty of Alfred Hitchcock films in the schedules this week (see weekday afternoons on Sky Select), and here’s his oft imitated voyeuristic thriller – perhaps the most influential of them all. Following a successful run of collaborations with westerns director Anthony Mann, James Stewart (above, with Grace Kelly) hooked up with Hitch. In this, his second of four films for the master of suspense, he is Jeff, a professional photographer who is left wheelchairbound after breaking his leg. Confined to his apartment, he indulges his passion for people-watching, but, as the days and nights start to blur into one, he becomes obsessed with one neighbour in particular – a man he deduces (without a single scrap of evidence) has murdered his wife. Surely this is just the fancy of a man gone stir crazy – or is it? VT