As one who doesn't know the novel behind "Midnight in the Garden...." I can't compare it with the film. My surprise was that someone (Eastwood) whose work usually promulgates senseless violence and macho BS pulled off something as (dare I say it?) sensitive as "Midnight in the Garden...." Those who know Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" (I am not one of them) say that Visconti's film trashed the novel from top to bottom. I only know that it trashed what I do know of Mahler biography, and that (among other things) the image of the sunset against the Nietzsche song from Mahler 3 (which explicitly mentions "Mitternacht") is dead-on "wrong." Some say that it really takes a genius to mess up that badly--perhaps someone who knows Visconti's other work can say whether or not that is the case here. Aaron J. Rabushka [log in to unmask] http://www.cowtown.net/users/arabushk/