 Indeed, it is this very tension which has made the film such an enduring favourite.The values which Laura precariously, but ultimately successfully, clings to were widely shared and respected (if not always observed) at the time of the film's original setting (the status of a divorced woman, for example, remained sufficiently scandalous in the UK to cause Edward VIII to abdicate in 1936).Updating the story may have left those values behind and with them vanished the credibility of the plot, which may be why the 1974 remake could not compete.