We get a hazy shot of the ceiling of the Orpheum Theatre, 842 S. Broadway, as we pan down to see Kenneth Branaugh as Roman Strauss conducting the Los Angeles Symphony in 1948 in "Dead Again" (Paramount, 1991).
This is a sequence that is revealed when Grace (Emma Thompson) is under hypnosis decades later. In the 1948 scenes Thompson plays Margaret Strauss, a woman who was murdered, allegedly by her husband Roman.
In the present-day portions of the film Branaugh plays Mike Church, a detective who is trying to figure out who Grace is and why she has memories of scenes that occurred before she was born. Grace initially has amnesia and turns up, unable to speak, at a church home for young boys that once was the Strauss estate. The film, directed by Branagh, also stars Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi, Hanna Schygulla, Christine Ebersole and Campbell Scott.
It's all about karma, past lives, gender switching, and many pairs of scissors. Robin Williams, playing a former psychoanalyst now a grocery store clerk, tells us "There are more people on the planet who believe in reincarnation than who don't."
Do we see more of the Orpheum? Well, not really. Just a brief flash in the middle of a fevered montage near the end of the movie when past and present are all madly intercut.
See the Los Angeles Theatres pages about the Orpheum Theatre for a history of this 1926 vintage vaudeville house along with several hundred photos.
On IMDb: "Dead Again"
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