Dead Again (DVD)

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Just when it appeared that the noir thriller had seen better days, the British came to the rescue. Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson play dual roles in this 1991 detective yarn. We would have to wait another four years for a traditional film noir as good, Denzel Washington's "Devil in a Blue Dress."

But "Dead Again" is less an action picture than "Devil" and more a suspenseful, psychological mystery. Most of its action comes at the end. Paramount's DVD transfer maintains the high standards of their home video line, so the film pleases on all counts.

Mike Church (Branagh, sounding convincingly American) is not your ordinary cinematic gumshoe. Among other things, he's not particularly tough (Bogart), wise cracking (Powell), or world weary (Mitchum). Instead, he's rather boyish and charming and leaves his revolver at home.

Most of Mike's work appears to be missing-persons cases. He was brought up in a Catholic orphanage and from time to time the old priest who raised him calls on him for a favor. This time the service is to investigate the background of a young woman (Thompson) with amnesia, who is also having serious nightmares. In her sleep she keeps seeing herself being stabbed to death by a man supposedly her husband.

With the help of an antique dealer and hypnotist (Derek Jacobi), Church finds out the woman is dreaming of a real murder that happened forty years before. Even more frightening than that, from old newspaper and magazine clippings they discover that the woman who was murdered, Margaret Strauss, and the husband who was convicted and executed for the murder, Roman Strauss, look exactly like the amnesiac woman and Mike Church!

In black-and-white flashback sequences, the Strausses are, of course, played by Thompson and Branagh. As things proceed, everyone begins to worry that history may be on the verge of repeating itself. And to further complicate matters, a fiancee of the woman's shows up claiming that she occasionally loses her memory. Additional characters include Gray Baker (Andy Garcia), an old-time reporter, and Dr. Cozy Carlisle (Robin Williams), a washed-up shrink now working as a grocery clerk.

The story delves into the possibilities of reincarnation, of fate, of past lives, and of past-life experiences repeating themselves. The lady may be related in one way or another to the Strauss murder victim, Church may be related to the murderer, and the whole deadly affair may be about to happen all over again. There are a lot of loose ends in the story line, a lot of plot ideas that don't add up, but none of it seems to matter much as we get caught up in the suspense and wonder of it all.

According to "Katz's Film Encyclopedia," the term "film noir" (dark or black film) was derived from an expression French critics of the nineteenth century originally used to describe the British Gothic novel. But today it applies to "a type of film that is characterized by its dark, somber tone and cynical, pessimistic mood." Specifically, film noir portrays "the dark and gloomy underworld of crime and corruption," whose heroes are often "cynical, disillusioned, and insecure loners." In terms of style, the film noir "characteristically abounds with night scenes and deep shadows." All of which applies to "Dead Again," with the possible exception that private-eye Mike Church is not so cynical or disillusioned. He is, however, quite clearly a loner and insecure. Even the background music of the film evokes the period atmosphere of the 1940s and 50s noir genre, not only in the flashback segments but even when the action is set in the present.