The Oberwald Mystery (Antonioni, 1980): BFI Soutbank, NFT2, 6pm
Chicago Reader review:
This
is an experimental film in the original rather than fashionable sense
of that term—a 1980 adaptation by Michelangelo Antonioni of Jean
Cocteau's play The Eagle Has Two Heads that
reunites the filmmaker with Monica Vitti in the starring role as a
widowed queen who falls in love with an anarchist poet sent to
assassinate her. What makes this experimental is neither the play nor
the performances, but the fact that Antonioni shot it in color video
(later transferred to 35-millimeter), regarding the medium not as
“television” but as a new kind of cinematography, and associating each
character with a different color as part of his visual exploration. The
choice of the Cocteau play seems more arbitrary than inevitable, which
raises the form-versus-content issue even more than in most Antonioni
features. The results are singular, to say the least.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is an extract.
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