Philistines beware, especially American ones! This has all the elements you'll hate - a langorous approach to film language, a painterly sense of composition, an intense homoerotic focus to its elegant narrative, a wonderful and unusual use of music and, even worse, it's based on a story you'd probably hate as well... If, however, you do feel that films don't to have derivative plotlines, be full of action and crappy dialogue, don't need the visual grammar of MTV/TV Commercials, then watch this. It's one of my favourite films, and is perhaps Visconti's most perfectly formed piece of work. It's sublime, like the movement of Mahler he uses insistently throughout the film.
Review of Death in Venice
