Dead Again: An Homage to Vertigo

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This post will clearly be about Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again, which was released in 1991, it (roughly) depicts a story of a woman, Grace who is haunted by nightmares of the murder/death of her past life.  The modern film acts as an homage to Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo. Kenneth not only directed this film but also stars in it along side Emma Thompson. Whom, by the by, he was married to at the time of the film's production and release. 

It has been quite some time since I have seen this film but I came across some old notes for it and I thought it'd be a cool idea to post my original thoughts and notes from the film in a short entry before I go back to re-watch it. 

Branagh plays the role of Mike Church, as well as, Roman Strauss. And Thompson plays the part of Grace and Margret Strauss. In the beginning of Dead Again, when the mute women wakes up from her nightmare and opens her room door a nun steps out of darkness just like in the ending of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, when Johnny,Jimmy Stewart's role, and Madeline/Judith, played by Kim Novak, were in the bell tower in the church. 

Another thing I noticed about the nun was the large cross she wore around her next which I think was homage to Hitchcock trait for making certain objects look bigger than what they are. Other than that, I did not see any other complements to the way Hitchcock manipulated the size of objects and things. 

 Dead Again also used quit a few low camera angle shots of the main character Mike’s apartment, which resembled the low camera shots used by Hitchcock in Vertigo of the church bell tower. I also noticed that the main character in Dead Again last name was church so that was also another under the radar comparison or homage to Vertigo. 

Story wise there were many more compliments to Hitchcock in Dead Again, such as Mike taking the girl he called ‘Grace’ home and Mike’s character being an private detective again a complement to Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

Just like in Vertigo when Johnny took Madeline home after she had fallen into the bay. The woman Mike was taking care off had two names, ‘Grace’ the one he gave her and her real name ‘Amanda’ just like with Johnny and Madeline/Judith in Vertigo. 

A subtle thing I realized that happened in the beginning of the movie was the fact that the main character Mike was sitting in his car on the wrong side of the road.  In Hitchcock’s Vertigo his main character had driven on the wrong side of the road twice. Another clear homage to Hitchcock was the use of the three sixty-camera angle that is used in Vertigo with Johnny and Judith. 

Branagh uses this camera angle when ‘Grace’ and Mike visit the antique shop and the shop owner hypnotizes ‘Grace.’ One of the things I noticed in Dead Again was that Branagh used sound to convey the lurking of danger or he would have a musical build up for the climax of certain scenes. For example the scene between Mike and ‘Grace’, after she was hypnotized and saw Mike in her vision, he blows up and pulls her from room to room handing her all of the pair of scissors he has and there is this music from a neighbor playing on the piano that builds and gets louder and Mike starts to yell louder. 

 It was almost as if the music was trying to play over Mike, and Mike was trying to yell over the music as if he could hear the build up. The scene is building to the breaking point of him mistakenly calling Emma's first character, Grace, Margaret and the build up in music wasn't something I remembered seeing very much in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.