NO-CREDIT RATING : Kenneth Branagh’s Gestapo Tactic

Uncredited performances are not unheard-of in Hollywood, but usually the role involved is little more than a cameo. In “Dead Again,” for example, Robin Williams does a turn as a doctor but is not listed in the credits.

But audiences who stick around for the end credits of “Swing Kids,” a Disney release opening Friday, may be struck by a curious omission. The name Kenneth Branagh is never seen, even though the British actor has a substantial role.

Williams left his name off “Dead Again,” directed by and starring Branagh, so that the public would not be misled into thinking the film was a comedy instead of a thriller, said Tamar Thomas, Branagh’s assistant.

The “Swing Kids” situation was different, according to both Thomas and Clifford Stevens, Branagh’s agent. In the new film, about a group of German youths who defied a Nazi ban on big-band music, Branagh plays a Gestapo officer bent on steering a rebellious jazz fan (Robert Sean Leonard) toward Hitler’s cause.

Stevens said he advised his client to go uncredited because there was no “reasonable formula” for granting him billing commensurate to his stature as the director and star of such movies as “Henry V” and the current “Peter’s Friends.” Branagh’s role is clearly subordinate to the parts played by the lesser-known Leonard (“Dead Poets Society”) and co-star Christian Bale (“Newsies”), another of the so-called swing kids.

“The two boys clearly were the stars,” Stevens said, adding that he wanted to avoid establishing a status-diminishing precedent.

Said Thomas: “He didn’t want to take anything away from (Leonard and Bale). It’s their film.”

Could Branagh’s decision be a sign that “Swing Kids” may be a clinker? The credit decision was made when Branagh’s Disney contract was signed, according to both Stevens and Thomas. Branagh, they said, has yet to see the movie.