Made in 1953 during Hollywood's first, brief flirtation with 3D, Dial M for Murder is a version of Frederick Knott's popular West End and Broadway thriller that Hitchcock took on as a technical exercise to fulfil a contract at Warner Brothers. Sadly the vogue for 3D was over by the time it could be released (there was an embargo that forced Warners to wait until the end of the Broadway run), so it only came out in the UK on the flat screen. Apart from a brief 1984 showing at the Ica, this newly struck print is the first 3D release here.

It's a variation on Strangers on a Train in which two men discuss (first playfully, then seriously) the murder of the other's spouse, and a companion piece to Rope, another British play about psychopathic killers. But where Rope was shot in real time on a single set in what...