Screen 2022 : Murder in Reverse? (1945)

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How do you make a slow burn revenge thriller with a running time under eighty minutes?  Cast William Hartnell as the wronged man and give him a role to showcase some exemplary performance technique. He glowers through the first half of Murder in Reverse? much like Spencer Tracy in Fury (1936) or John Mills in The Long Memory (1953).   Hartnell was thirty seven when he made this, playing a stevedore physically handy enough to go mano a mano with the brawny, twenty nine year old John Slater.  

After a pivot turn in the storytelling we get a variation of a portrayal of the First Doctor, an inquisitive, patient man who can be quick to anger, fascinated by the power of words, keenly feeling injustice. (Jimmy Hanley and Dinah Sheridan tag along in his wake like proto companions.) His final peroration in front of a dinner party jury of legal professionals (among them, the White Guardian) is something to behold.