The analyses deals with the story IHR GLÜCKLICHEN AUGEN by Ingeborg Bachmann from 1972 as well as its 1992 cinematic adaptation by Margareta Heinrich. The goal is to identify the common aspects and differences between both text and film as well as the limits, strong points and weaknesses of these medias. Furthermore, it shall be analysed if Heinrich’s film can be considered as an autonomous artistic work – despite its literary basis –, and if so, what type of cinematic adaptation of literature it represents. The analysis as well as the comparison show that – apart from common aspects – there are a lot of differences between Bachmann’s text and Heinrich’s movie; differences that are mostly caused by the big amount of cinematic additions such as a new storyline, new characters and symbolic aspects. This loose adaptation of the text classifies the movie as an autonomous piece of art and therefore as an interpreting transformation of the text. Furthermore, it’s becoming clear that the primary power of the medium film can be found in the depiction of simultaneity and the concrete portrayal of entities; its weakness, however, consists in the visualization of human inner worlds. The latter, although, is a strong point of the medium literature apart from offering various interpretations. Therefore, the weaknesses of one medium become the strong points of the other.
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