Beresford’s non-thriller background gives the film a surprising edge here. “In shock,” says Judd, “I hang up the phone and start wandering blankly back to my bunk. But, instead of what most directors would go for - some kind of close-up emphasising performance - Bruce did something different: he tracked backwards and lost me in the crowd, letting me be overwhelmed by my surroundings and letting the atmosphere of the place be that much more depressing.”

It’s a tricky set-up for a movie: how much do you let the audience know in advance? In an ideal world, Mr and Mrs Moviegoer would come to see Double Jeopardy because it has a star they know (Jones) and one in the making (Judd), and then be taken on a roller-coaster ride from happiness to despair to revenge and retribution. But movies don’t open into an ideal world: audiences want to know a little bit about the film before they buy a ticket. How much do you tell them?

The answer turned out to be: it didn’t really matter. US audiences weren’t bothered about knowing that Libby was going to be wrongly convicted after 20 minutes any more than they were worried, 40 years before, about going to see Psycho knowing that Janet Leigh would meet her end in the shower. And that happened almost an hour into Hitchcock’s film.

Libby and husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood) in happier times.

What audiences bought into with Double Jeopardy was not only the thriller with the intriguing hook described by Lewellen, but also the transformation that Libby undergoes. There is a great sequence where Judd’s character comes to terms with the fact that the courts are never going to quash her conviction; that the insurance company is not particularly interested in tracking down Nick; and that no one else is going to do it for her. It’s all up to her, and she trains through rain and snow, getting into shape to get her son back.

“What I love about this film,” says producer Leonard Goldberg, “is that it has a strong female character. It’s the kind of film that we’ve seen with males but never a female. When I first heard the idea for the film, I thought it had real surprises. And, if it surprises me, then I get interested.”

Benjamin Weir as their son Matty.

Audiences across America have been getting interested, too, not just with the idea of a woman able to kill her conniving husband with impunity, but also in the odd-couple relationship which develops between Travis and Libby. A father himself who has been forcibly separated from his child by a deceitful partner, Travis gradually shifts from being right behind Libby in the sense of pursuing her, to being right behind her in the sense of supporting her.