Dead Again

The film explores the themes of reincarnation, destiny and justice through parallel narratives of a society murder in the Hollywood of the 1940s and a modern-day search for the identity of a woman with amnesia. Thompson and Branagh play the key roles in both stories.

The film begins with opening credits intercut with pans across newspaper clippings about the society murder. Most of the articles were written by Gray Baker (Andy Garcia), who visited Roman Strauss on the day of his execution.

Mike Church (Branagh), a smart-alecky Los Angeles private investigator, usually runs down deadbeats and minor heirs for his clients. One day he's called in by the priest in charge of the orphanage where Mike was raised, to help identify a woman (Thompson) who showed up at their gates in a state of shock. The woman is unable to speak and seems to have no recollection of who she is or what happened to her.

After making a few inquiries, Mike takes the woman, whom he calls Grace, to stay at his apartment, where he discovers she has a terror of anything that looks like a pair of scissors. Over the course of a few days, the two of them uncover clues to her identity, but nothing concrete; Mike finds himself intrigued by Grace and is protective of her.

Grace regains her voice during a hypnotic session with an antique dealer (Jacobi), who claims she is having a "past-life" experience. She remembers a couple who lived during the 1940s, a famous conductor and his pianist wife, as if she were part of their history. The antique dealer finds a LIFE magazine identifying the couple as actual people, Roman and Margaret. Margaret was brutally murdered, and Roman was tried and executed for her murder.

As Mike and Grace fall in love, Grace is upset by the similarities of their courtship to that Roman and Margaret. Grace becomes afraid of Mike and is unconvinced by his assertions that he's "not Roman." The antiques dealer hypnotizes Mike, leading to the revelation that Mike is not the reincarnation of Roman, but of Margaret. Grace becomes even more afraid of Mike.

Mike consults with Cozy Carlisle (Robin Williams), while Grace consults with the antiques dealer; both are advised to kill each other.

Pete (Wayne Knight) reveals the true identity of "Grace": Amanda Sharpe, an artist. He takes her and the antiques dealer to her house, where she is surprised to find she is an artist obsessed with using scissors in her art. To make her feel safer, the antiques dealer gives Amanda a gun that belonged to a gangster.

Mike finds Gray Baker, old and decrepit, at a nursing home. Baker says he no longer thinks Roman killed Margaret, and says that the housekeeper, Inga, would know. After the murder, the housekeeper moved out an opened an antiques shop that is now run by her son.

Thus Mike comes to believe that Inga killed Margaret. Mike visits Inga, who explains that it was her son, Frankie, who killed Margaret. Inga had always been in love with Roman, after saving his life. After Margaret married Roman, she treated Inga coldly. Inga was devastated and broke down to her son Frankie one night. Frankie, then still a young boy, killed Margaret, believing that this would solve his mother's problems. Because Inga has saved Roman's life, Roman protected Frankie from the authorities, even though he knew this meant his execution. After Mike drives off with this knowledge to Amanda's house, Frankie arrives and kills his mother.

Mike breaks into Amanda's apartment and she shoots him as he tries to explain the truth about Roman and Margaret. The antiques dealer shows up and Amanda tries to shoot him but the gun clogs. Frankie slaps Amanda unconscious and prepares to shoot him, but somehow Mike survived being shot and stabs Frankie with the scissors just in time. Pete shows up with a pizza and tries to hold Mike back from killing Amanda, but quickly realizes that it Frankie who intends to kill. Frankie lunges at Mike with the scissors, so Mike quickly moves a statue of scissors in front of Frankie, killing him.

Mike and Grace kiss.

The movie was filmed entirely in color. After test screenings, it was decided to use black and white for the "past" sequences to help clear up audience confusion. The final frame, once the mystery is solved, fades from black and white to color.

The negative of the final frame was flipped to match the present day lovers to the doomed 1940s newlyweds they embodied; i.e., Margaret dissolves into Mike, and Roman dissolves into Grace.

When the audience first meets Mike Church, he's seated in his car, which is parked on the wrong side of the street. While most people believe this is because Kenneth Branagh is from the United Kingdom (where cars are driven on the left-hand side of the road), it is actually because behind him are a number of skyscrapers that he, as the director, wanted included in the background.

In addition to the dual roles played by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, actress Jo Anderson and the film's composer Patrick Doyle both play small dual parts, appearing in the present-day and 1940s sequences.

Branagh has said that at the time he made this film (and still, to some extent) he was very interested in the technique of uninterrupted takes, and several can be seen throughout the movie. Also note sequences such as the first hypnosis sequence at the Laughing Duke, which features an extremely complicated camera shot in 360 degrees, which involved a great deal of precise timing and technical faculty. Branagh noted that this relatively short scene was shot perhaps fifteen times, taking all day.

According to the director's commentary on the DVD edition of the movie, the film has numerous in-jokes. For instance, a date seen in one of the newspaper clippings is actually Branagh's birthday, and Roman Strauss' prisoner number is the date of the Battle of Agincourt (Branagh's previous film, which had just launched his career at the time he undertook Dead Again, was Henry V).

Branagh was born the second of three children, in Belfast to working-class Protestant parents Frances (née Harper) and William Branagh, a carpenter who ran a company that specialised in fitting partitions and suspended ceilings. He was educated at Grove Primary School. At the age of nine, he relocated with his family to Reading in England to escape the Troubles.

Branagh is Honorary President of NICVA (the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action.) He received an honorary doctorate in Literature from Queen's University of Belfast in 1990. He is also a patron for the charity Over The Wall.

He speaks Italian and is a lifelong supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. He was married to Emma Thompson until 1995. For several years after divorcing Thompson he was in a well-publicised relationship with Helena Bonham Carter, with whom he also starred and directed in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In 2003 he married film art director Lindsay Brunnock , to whom he was introduced by Bonham Carter in 1997.

Stage work
Branagh achieved some early measure of success in his native Northern Ireland for his role as the title character in the BBC's Play for Today series known as the Billy Plays, written by Graham Reid and set in Belfast. He has worked on both stage and screen.

He received acclaim in the UK for his stage performances, first winning the 1982 SWET Award for Best Newcomer, for his role as Judd in Julian Mitchell's Another Country, immediately after leaving RADA. He and David Parfitt founded the Renaissance Theatre Company in 1987, following success with several productions on the London 'Fringe', including Branagh's full-scale production of Romeo and Juliet at the Lyric Studio, co-starring with Samantha Bond. The first major Renaissance production was Branagh's Christmas 1987 staging of Twelfth Night at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, starring Richard Briers as Malvolio and Frances Barber as Viola, and with an original score by Scottish actor, musician and composer Patrick Doyle, who two years later was to compose the music for Branagh's film of Henry V.

Branagh became a major presence in the media and on the British stage when Renaissance collaborated with Birmingham Rep for a 1988 touring season of three Shakespeare plays under the umbrella title of Renaissance Shakespeare on the Road, which also played a repertory season at the Phoenix Theatre in London. It featured directorial debuts for Judi Dench with Much Ado About Nothing (starring Branagh and Bond as Benedick and Beatrice), Geraldine McEwan with As You Like It, and Derek Jacobi directing Branagh in the title role in Hamlet, with Sophie Thompson as Ophelia. Critic Milton Shulman for the Evening Standard wrote: "On the positive side Branagh has the vitality of Olivier, the passion of Gielgud, the assurance of Guinness, to mention but three famous actors who have assuaged the role. On the negative side, he has not got the magnetism of Olivier, nor the mellifluous voice quality of Gielgud nor the intelligence of Guinness."

A year later in 1989 Branagh co-starred with Emma Thompson in the Renaissance revival of Look Back in Anger. Judi Dench directed both the theatre and television productions, presented first in Belfast then at the London Coliseum and Lyric Theatre.

More recently, in 2002, Branagh starred in the Crucible Theatre , Sheffield as Richard III and in 2003 in the Royal National Theatre's production of David Mamet's Edmond. Branagh directed The Play What I Wrote in England in 2001 and directed a Broadway production in 2003.

Film Work

Branagh as Henry V (far right)Branagh is probably best known for his film adaptations of the works of William Shakespeare, beginning with Henry V in 1989, Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost, and Hamlet, with As You Like It following in 2006. As You Like It premiered in theatres in Europe, but was sent directly to television in the U.S., where it had its U.S. premiere on HBO in August of 2007. Although Branagh played the role of Iago on the 1995 Othello, he did not direct the film; it was directed by Oliver Parker. Othello is the one Shakespeare film that Branagh has appeared in which was directed by someone else.

Notable non-Shakespeare films that Branagh has appeared in include Dead Again and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, both of which he also directed, Wild Wild West, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the yet-to-be-released Valkyrie, about the 1944 attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler.

Branagh has also been involved in several made-for-TV films. Among his most acclaimed portrayals is that of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in the 2005 film Warm Springs. Though the film received sixteen Emmy nominations, winning five (including Best Made-For-Television Film), Branagh did not win the award for his portrayal. He did, however, receive an Emmy award for his performance in the 2001 TV Conspiracy, a depiction of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials conceived the Final Solution. Branagh's award winning performance was for the part of Reinhard Heydrich.

Branagh has been nominated for four Academy Awards. His first two nominations were for Henry V (one each for directing and acting), then one for the 1992 film short subject Swan Song, and again for his work on the screenplay of Hamlet in 1996. Included amongst his many other accolades is a nomination for "worst" supporting actor Razzie in 1999 for his performance in the film Wild Wild West. Branagh has co-starred several times with actress Emma Thompson, to whom he was married from 1989 to 1995. They appeared together in Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Dead Again, and Peter's Friends.

In 1990, at age 30, Branagh authored an autobiography, which he entitled Beginning and has narrated several audio books such as The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis.

In 1994, Branagh declined an appointment as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).[citation needed] Branagh was the youngest actor to receive the Golden Quill (also known as the Gielgud Award) in 2000.

Branagh began his directing career with Henry V at the age of 29, and from 1989 to 1996 appeared mostly in films he also directed. The commercial failure of Love's Labours Lost in 2000 temporarily ended Branagh's career behind the camera, but he has recently begun directing features again, most recently the thriller Sleuth.

Branagh is set to team up with the BBC for the production of a series of three films based on Henning Mankell's best-selling Wallander crime novels.Branagh will also serve as the executive producer. The three 90-minute crime dramas are to be filmed this summer on location in Ystad in southern Sweden, home of fictional detective Kurt Wallander. Mankell's series of books on the life of the enigmatic police inspector have achieved great international success, selling 25 million copies worldwide.