Like many directors who were successful in the late 1960s and 70s, Michelangelo Antonioni spent the 1980s struggling to finance projects, alternating between filming stage plays and small television productions.
For this reason, "The Mystery of Oberwald" is most interesting in how it clashes with the rest of Antionioni's filmography. For example, whilst the majority of Antonioni's films take place in a contemporary setting, "Oberwald" exists in some pre-World War I, quasi-Hapsburg past. Likewise, the film is based on a stage-play, revokes Antonioni's use of glacial visuals in favour for lots of verbiage and trades some of the director's usual themes for a tale of magic and romanticism. The austerity of Antonioni's compositions are also swapped for a grungy VHS look, the picture shot on video rather than celluloid. The result is a stagey film which looks like a very bad 1980s television costume drama...which is exactly what "The Mystery of Oberwald" is. The film was produced by Radiotelevisione Italiana, and was originally intended for the small screen.
Still, "Oberwald" is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, Antonioni manipulates his video cameras, such that his actors are given colourful halos or auras which change according to their moods or intentions. This film thus became, not only the first theatrically released feature length video, but the first to utilise video image and colour manipulation.
This may all seem rather trite nowadays, but it was the logical extension to Antonioni's experimental use of colour in "Red Desert". Such experiments were in his mind as early as the 1960s, when he planned to shoot "Tecnicamente Dolce" (a 1966 Jack Nicholson vehicle) with colour mixing video cameras.
The second interesting thing about "Oberwald" is the plot itself. The film revolves around a hunted man (a poet called Sebastian) who breaks into a castle to kill a local Queen. He fails in his mission, but the Queen spares his life because he once wrote a subversive poem which she enjoyed. The Queen and Sebastian then hatch a plan together - usurp the local Dutchess and reinstate the Queen's rule – but this plan is called off when Sebastian dies.
Though slight, several typical Antonioni themes emerge: the artist as revolutionary, the ability of art to instigate reform, the impotency of this same art and various musings on media and their effects. The clash of the film's "video look" with the ancient setting of "Oberwald" is also much akin to Michael Mann's recent "Public Enemies", where digital cameras somehow make a 1930's gangster flick seem, not anachronistic, but caught out of time. These themes are encapsulated by a painting of the Queen's husband which strangely "resembles" the poet Sebastian. Art, as an abstraction of life, is already a kind of acceptable or codified reality which resists or is disrupted by its re-representation via different media. At the same time, this re-representation, media continually evolving, is necessary for art to retain its revolutionary or challenging function; ie, Sebastian must, not only survive, but resemble the dead image for his poetry to have any potency.
During the era, Antonioni would speak optimistically and extensively about future technologies (specifically video) and their role in art and society, but few of his words have come to pass, VHS quickly discarded with the arrival of the digital age. And as is the case with most things, the benefits of these technological advances are often proportional to their negative downsides. A sort of yin-yang effect, where there is no progression but rather a kind of heightened stagnation, which this bizarre little film encapsulates, the film beginning where it ends, a new King/Video adopting the mantle of his ancestors/cinema, only to promptly die at the feet of a once again marginalised Queen/audience.
6/10 – For Antonioni completists only. Worth one viewing.
For this reason, "The Mystery of Oberwald" is most interesting in how it clashes with the rest of Antionioni's filmography. For example, whilst the majority of Antonioni's films take place in a contemporary setting, "Oberwald" exists in some pre-World War I, quasi-Hapsburg past. Likewise, the film is based on a stage-play, revokes Antonioni's use of glacial visuals in favour for lots of verbiage and trades some of the director's usual themes for a tale of magic and romanticism. The austerity of Antonioni's compositions are also swapped for a grungy VHS look, the picture shot on video rather than celluloid. The result is a stagey film which looks like a very bad 1980s television costume drama...which is exactly what "The Mystery of Oberwald" is. The film was produced by Radiotelevisione Italiana, and was originally intended for the small screen.
Still, "Oberwald" is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, Antonioni manipulates his video cameras, such that his actors are given colourful halos or auras which change according to their moods or intentions. This film thus became, not only the first theatrically released feature length video, but the first to utilise video image and colour manipulation.
This may all seem rather trite nowadays, but it was the logical extension to Antonioni's experimental use of colour in "Red Desert". Such experiments were in his mind as early as the 1960s, when he planned to shoot "Tecnicamente Dolce" (a 1966 Jack Nicholson vehicle) with colour mixing video cameras.
The second interesting thing about "Oberwald" is the plot itself. The film revolves around a hunted man (a poet called Sebastian) who breaks into a castle to kill a local Queen. He fails in his mission, but the Queen spares his life because he once wrote a subversive poem which she enjoyed. The Queen and Sebastian then hatch a plan together - usurp the local Dutchess and reinstate the Queen's rule – but this plan is called off when Sebastian dies.
Though slight, several typical Antonioni themes emerge: the artist as revolutionary, the ability of art to instigate reform, the impotency of this same art and various musings on media and their effects. The clash of the film's "video look" with the ancient setting of "Oberwald" is also much akin to Michael Mann's recent "Public Enemies", where digital cameras somehow make a 1930's gangster flick seem, not anachronistic, but caught out of time. These themes are encapsulated by a painting of the Queen's husband which strangely "resembles" the poet Sebastian. Art, as an abstraction of life, is already a kind of acceptable or codified reality which resists or is disrupted by its re-representation via different media. At the same time, this re-representation, media continually evolving, is necessary for art to retain its revolutionary or challenging function; ie, Sebastian must, not only survive, but resemble the dead image for his poetry to have any potency.
During the era, Antonioni would speak optimistically and extensively about future technologies (specifically video) and their role in art and society, but few of his words have come to pass, VHS quickly discarded with the arrival of the digital age. And as is the case with most things, the benefits of these technological advances are often proportional to their negative downsides. A sort of yin-yang effect, where there is no progression but rather a kind of heightened stagnation, which this bizarre little film encapsulates, the film beginning where it ends, a new King/Video adopting the mantle of his ancestors/cinema, only to promptly die at the feet of a once again marginalised Queen/audience.
6/10 – For Antonioni completists only. Worth one viewing.