This unusual adaptation of The Eagle with Two Heads, Jean Cocteau's period stage play (Cocteau himself directed a film version in 1948), represented another audacious technical accomplishment for Antonioni. The Mystery of Oberwald was filmed on video and transferred to 35mm film, allowing Antonioni to make bold expressionistic play with colour and texture. Monica Vitti, in her first role for Antonioni since 1964's The Red Desert (another tour de force experiment with colour), plays a 19th century middle European queen who falls in love with the anarchist poet sent to assassinate her. The film was never released in North America, and has only screened in Vancouver twice before, at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1988 and at Pacific Cinémathèque in 1999.
"Antonioni's most impressive experiment yet ... he has suggested a bold new direction for the cinema - and created a work of dazzling ambition and achievement - Richard Corliss, Time Magazine