The Mystery of Oberwald is a 1980 Italian drama film written, directed, and edited by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Monica Vitti, Paolo Bonacelli, and Franco Branciaroli. Based on the 1946 play L'Aigle à deux têtes by Jean Cocteau, the film is about a man who breaks into the castle at Oberwald to kill the queen but faints before doing so. The man's physical resemblance to the murdered king leads to a strange turn of events. The Mystery of Oberwald received the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Silver Ribbon in 1982.

Plot

During the nineteenth century, a young radical poet named Sebastian (Franco Branciaroli) breaks into an old dilapidated castle in Oberwald on a dark stormy night intending to kill the queen and free his country. The queen (Monica Vitti) has been in mourning for ten years for her husband the king who was assassinated on their wedding day. Sebastian, who faints before he can kill the queen, is the spitting image of the assassinated king. Sebastian and the queen talk, and the queen discovers that Sebastian once wrote a subversive poem that she liked, even though it was attacking her. The queen dares Sebastian to kill her, otherwise she vows to kill him.