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Plot
summary
Delft, Holland,
1665. After her father, a tile painter, is blinded in a kiln explosion,
seventeen-year-old Griet must work to support her family. She becomes a
maid in the house of Johannes Vermeer and gradually attracts the master
painter's attention. Though worlds apart in upbringing, education and social
standing, Vermeer recognizes Griet's intuitive understanding of color and
light and slowly draws her into the mysterious world of his paintings.
Vermeer is a
perfectionist, often taking months to finish a painting. His shrewd mother-in-law,
Maria Thins, struggles to maintain the family's lavish lifestyle on the
income from his painstakingly meager output. Seeing that Griet inspires
Vermeer, she takes the dangerous decision to allow their clandestine relationship
to develop.
Plunged into
a chaotic Catholic household run by Vermeer's volatile wife Catharina,
surrounded by an
ever-increasing
brood of children, Griet is increasingly at risk of exposure or worse.
Twelve-year-old Cornelia, a mischievous girl who sees more than she should,
quickly grows jealous and suspicious of Griet and is determined to cause
trouble.
Alone and unprotected,
Griet also contends with the attentions of Pieter, a local butcher boy,
and Vermeer's patron, the wealthy and lascivious Master van Ruijven, who
is frustrated that his money does not buy him control over the artist.
While Griet falls increasingly under Vermeer's spell, she cannot be sure
of his feelings for her.
The Machiavellian
van Ruijven, sensing the intimacy between master and maid, gleefully contrives
a commission for Vermeer to paint Griet alone. The result will be one of
the greatest paintings ever created, but at what cost?
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General
Comments
This is a beautiful film with beautiful
photography, brilliant acting & lovely music. The whole film
looks like a seventeenth century Dutch painting. There is not much action
& not many words but it holds you enthralled with the depiction of
life in seventeenth century Delft, the beauty of the settings, and the
emotional, sexually charged relationship between
Griet & Vermeer. Scarlett Johannsen is the
perfect Griet and it is the chemistry between her & Colin that
makes this movie so special.
Peter Webber said "You know obviously Scarlett
& Colin, they're world class actors. You just can't tell whether there's
going to be any chemistry when they come together. And that was the one
thing that we were waiting with baited breath; when we put them in a room
together because you can't fake it. We've all seen so many films where
it doesn't happen between the two leads & thank God it did, that's
all I can say, thank God it did. And that meant that on some levels you're
shooting a documentary because the sparks you see fly are sparks that are
really there in the air rather than two actors having to invent stuff.
(DVD)
"We just slowed it down so that stuff would
happen between the two of them because it was all down to the chemistry.
That's where the heart of the movie was. When you have actors of this calibre
they don't need lines you just need a close up and it says everything (Phase
9 movies)
Scarlett said the tear running from her eye when
Vermeer pierces her ear was real. She said "Everything was magic at
that moment. (de Morgen, Belgium)
 Although
the book was an adaptation of the novel by Tracy Chevalier, both director
and cast decided to stay away from the book so that the film may stand
on its own. "I deliberately held off reading the book for a while as well,"
says Webber. ... There was one thing I was scared of: I had the script,
I had done about eight months working on the script with the writer. ...
I was worried that if I read the book too soon, I would have a whole load
of knowledge, just there in my subconscious..." IGN
Ent.
In "Girl With
a Pearl Earring," recently made into a film with Scarlett Johansson and
Colin Firth, Chevalier imagines a scenario in which a teenage housemaid
inspires Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer to create his famous painting of
the same name. The book, small and simply told, also explores female independence,
the mystery of artistic creation and social stratification in 17th century
Holland. SF Chronicle/SFGATE
Although
the question remains unanswered as to the real-life identity of the girl
with the pearl earring, audiences across the world will want to believe
the story they see on screen. In a seemingly effortless way, the film brings
Griet and her surroundings to life. Sets reflect the dismal poverty of
the time; Griet's hands are red from the housework she endures and then
dyed blue from the colors she mixes for her master. "The challenge of the
film was to create a mood, and make the characters feel real. In a film
where everything is very repressed and underplayed, that is very important.
I wanted a world in which you could almost smell the butcher's shop. That
is an excretion of lots of tiny details, and that makes the world feel
real." Nina Chestney Yomiuri Shimbun London Bureau
This film, perhaps, should come with
an advisory warning: Not for everyone! It is a film about art, love and
power. But, it is also a film constructed on the power of the visual; whether
that manifests itself through art or fleeting glances across a room. This
may prove difficult viewing matter for some. Webber himself admits as much:
"It will never play to the audiences of films like The Lord of the Rings.
It is not mainstream in that way. It will inevitably disappoint some people.
But, at the risk of sounding arrogant, when making this film, I wanted
to make myself happy. Certainly, the film is what I wanted it to be. But,
if you don't like it, fine." Nina Chestney Yomiuri Shimbun
London Bureau
The girl in the painting is Griet, played
by the ingenuous Johansson, who is forced by family circumstances to become
a maid for the Vermeer family. Soon after her arrival in the household,
an intimate relationship grows between her and her artist master. The relationship
has consequences that echo through the household, and threaten to transcend
the strict 17th-century rules of propriety.
The
film opened in Britain to a lot of controversy surrounding the "loose interpretation"
of the identity of the girl in the painting. Some argue that the girl was
Vermeer's daughter, while others claim that no daughter would look at her
father in such a suggestive way. Whoever she was, the film is not a history
lesson. It does not attempt to solve a mystery; it rather provides an alternative
possibility. "The book and the film are true to all the facts which are
known, but we don't know much about Vermeer's life. So, we had more room
as storytellers to create something entertaining, and true to the spirit
of Vermeer," Webber said in an interview with The Daily Yomiuri.
The focus of
the film is on the emerging relationship between maid and master. This
makes for a great corset-ripping costume drama, but Briton Webber was emphatic
that the interpretation should be more subtle. "I wanted to make a film
which was very quiet, intimate and erotic, without being overtly sexual
in the modern way. I wanted something different to the average British
costume drama: something darker, more dangerous and more singular," he
says. Audiences expecting explicit love scenes and obvious double entendres
will be surprised by this film. An overt demonstration of drama would be
too incongruous to the nature of the film. This film is about silence.
It shrouds the opening scenes; the unsaid captures the audience's attention
from the very beginning. Nina Chestney Yomiuri Shimbun
London Bureau
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Production
Details
David
Weddle, Variety
In "Girl With
a Pearl Earring," director Peter Webber and his production team created
a living, breathing, fully dimensionalized portrait of the 17th-century
Dutch town of Delft on a budget of just $10 million.
The secret to
their success lay in the angle of attack. Webber is a passionate admirer
of Stanley Kubrick's 18th-century epic, "Barry Lyndon." But upon reading
Olivia Hetreed's screenplay for "Pearl Earring," Webber saw a key difference
between Kubrick's film and the one he was about to make. "Kubrick was obsessed
with the spectacle and manners of the period," says Webber. "So he staged
these elaborate and expensive set pieces. My film was about the intimate
relationships within a single household."
"Pearl Earring"
focuses on painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) as he forms a covert
relationship with 17-year-old servant girl Griet (Scarlett Johansson).
"The characters
who pass through Vermeer's house come from a broad spectrum of society,
from the very wealthy to the very poor," says Webber. "You get a microcosm
of 17th-century Holland under one roof. So the film is, in a sense, an
intimate epic."
Production
Design
Finding a production
designer who could bring this distilled drama to the screen proved difficult.
"The various British production designers whom I spoke to approached the
film a bit like it was a museum piece," says Webber. "They wanted to get
all of the period details exactly right, and were slightly scared of not
getting it right."
When Webber met
Ben van Os --- who had worked with Peter Greenaway on "The Cook, The Thief,
His Wife, and Her Lover" and "Belly of an Architect" --- he knew he had
found the right person. "Ben is Dutch; this story is in his blood," says
the helmer. "So he wasn't intimidated by the period obligations. He was
much more interested in story and character. How are we going to create
this mood? Ben said, 'We'll take this from this period and this from that
period.' It was music to my ears.
"The most important
things are the story and the characters. I really don't care if I'm going
to get a letter from some expert in Dutch architecture saying, 'That roof
design wasn't used until 17 years after your movie takes place.'"
Van Os created
a cross-section of Dutch society by building three interior sets: the drab
monochromatic, Calvinistic home of Griet; the lurid, painting-filled Catholic
chaos of the Vermeer house; and the mansion of Vermeer's wealthy patron,
van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), filled with curios gathered on his world travels
and eerie stuffed animals, which convey van Ruijven's predatory nature.
The Vermeer house
presented the biggest challenge. Van Os constructed the three-story set
on one of the largest soundstages in Luxembourg. "We wanted the house to
give us that sense of frames within frames so familiar from Vermeer's paintings,"
says van Os. "We built rooms with connecting doorways that led the eye
through the house to give a feeling of space --- and lack of privacy. We
wanted Griet to always feel watched because the film is about being observed,
either by Vermeer as he paints her, or by the other family members with
their various agendas."
Van Os knows
that the little details give this cloistered world authenticity. "For instance,
the windows are all exact reproductions of the those that were used at
the time," he says. "That was a big undertaking, quite expensive. We went
to a company that restores all kinds of windows in old churches and historic
buildings and had them build them for us."
For the exteriors,
Webber and van Os spread dirt and trash to give the streets the feel of
a crowded city. "I was obsessed with getting animals --- dogs, livestock
--- into as many shots as I could," says Webber, "because it brings a breath
of life to the piece.
Costume
Design
The distillation
process extended to the wardrobe as well. "I wanted a stripped-down look,"
says Webber. "If I dressed all the actors in the real costumes of that
era, they would be wearing ruffles and baggy outfits. I didn't want to
put Colin Firth in that. For a modern audience he's going to look too costumey.
So we came up with a look we jokingly called period Prada, to give the
clothes sleek lines. I called it my Vermeer filter: take the real clothes
from the period and reduce them to their essence."
Costume designer
Dien van Straalen --- who worked for Greenaway on "The Cook, the Thief"
and "Prospero's Books" --- combed through second-hand clothing and furniture
stores, Indian silk shops and garment marts throughout London and Holland
in search of period fabrics. Old curtains and slipcovers were converted
to jackets and dresses, and aged with sandpaper. The wardrobes for each
character varied from prosaic to grand. Again, the clothes made up a cross-section
of the 17th-century Dutch society. "We used pale colors for Scarlett Johansson
to give her the drab look of a poor servant girl," van Straalen explains.
As for Vermeer,
"obviously he was not a wealthy man, though he was considerably better
off than Griet. So I wanted to keep him as plain as I could. He sometimes
had to go out to social events, so we gave him one aged black dress suit
with a simple white collar and a bit of braid.
"Vermeer's patron,
van Ruijven, wants to control Vermeer and enjoys his power over other people.
For me he was a peacock strutting around with his money. I used more braids
and more gold, big hats with feathers, and cloaks. We have costume makers
in Holland who used to work for the opera so they know exactly how to make
fancy clothing from that period."
Makeup
and Hair
"The makeup
for Scarlett Johansson was very simple," says makeup and hair designer
Jenny Shircore, who worked on "Dirty Pretty Things"; "Notting Hill"; and
"Elizabeth," for which she won an Academy Award. "We just had to keep her
skin looking milky, thick and creamy. This required some makeup because
Scarlett has spots and things that happen to a 17-year-old. We wanted to
present her as if she had no makeup on. We gave her a little bit of help
by bleaching her eyebrows, because in the Vermeer paintings it's all about
skin and face, nothing else gets in the way, so you eliminate those other
features."
Almost all of
the actors wore wigs, which presented problems. When Johansson's wig arrived
a couple of days before shooting, it had the wrong color and texture. "It
was a nightmare," Shircore laughs. "I didn't dare say a word to Peter,
because I thought: 'We must sort this out without giving him a headache.'
We were up all night dyeing, straightening, curling and redyeing the wig."
"For Vermeer's
wife, Catharina (Essie Davis), I used a very simple Dutch hairstyle. The
women wound their hair round the back of their heads. There comes a point
when you've finished the hair, it can't be wound anymore because the length
is used up. Instead of neatly pinning it away, we let the ends splay out,
because in looking at references, little drawings and prints, we found
that that's what they did. Once you're actually working within a period,
the hairstyles evolve very naturally."
Copyright
© 2003 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Variety is a registered trademark of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc. and
used under license. All
Rights
Reserved. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction
or distribution is prohibited without permission.
|
David
Weddle Variety
Sun Jan 11,
7:00 PM ET
Eduardo Serra
On Dec. 7, 2003,
Eduardo Serra walked away with the best cinematography award from Poland's
prestigious Camera Image Festival. Laszlo Kovacs --- d.p. of "Easy Rider"
and "The King of Marvin Gardens" --- was one of the jury members who voted
for Serra's work on "Girl With a Pearl Earring." "It's a beautiful story,
beautifully told," says Kovacs. "Serra did a brilliant job of emulating
the visual style of the 17th-century Dutch painters, and the work of Johannes
Vermeer in particular."
The movie focuses
on a fictionalized Vermeer (Colin Firth) as he forms a covert relationship
with a 17-year-old servant girl named Griet (Scarlett Johansson). When
Vermeer chooses Griet as the subject of his next portrait, he manipulates
both her emotions and his own, exploiting the sexual tension between them
to coax a mixture of sadness, longing, and frustration from Griet that
he captures on canvas.
"In preproduction,
Eduardo and I immersed ourselves in the art of the period," says the movie's
director, Peter Webber. "We pored over books with prints of the paintings,
talking about the moods we wanted to create in various scenes. Eduardo
was obsessed with reproducing the amazing use of light by the artists of
that period, and most particularly Vermeer's use of it."
"Vermeer's studio
is one of the main characters in the film," adds Serra. "The painters from
that period would work from natural light and would be very accurate in
respect to the light. Light would come from one window and they would try
to represent exactly what it would do on someone's face, the wall, the
table and objects on it. That's the story of our film: how the light touches
the young model Griet, and how Vermeer captures it on canvas. It's wonderful
for any cinematographer to have such an opportunity to evoke that, especially
for those who, like me, work with and respect natural lighting. I had the
experience of, in a way, touching Vermeer's creative process.
"At the same
time, I did not want to become too rigidly obsessed with Vermeer's imagery.
The very first thing Peter and I agreed on is the audience shouldn't leave
the theater saying, 'Every frame was a painting.' They should leave the
theater saying, 'What a wonderful story.' I am more interested in making
meaning than in making beauty."
Key tools: Arriflex
535 cameras. Film Stocks: Kodak 5218 for general interiors; Kodak 5263
for Vermeer's studio; for exteriors, Fuji Reala. All three stocks were
500 ASA.
Aesthetic: "I
like to have natural lighting with as few sources as possible. All of my
work is from watching the light that exists in real life and trying to
translate it onto film."
Challenge: "Finding
that balance between being faithful to Vermeer's paintings, and giving
priority to telling the story."
Oscar pedigree:
Serra was nominated for the Best Cinematography award in 1997 for "The
Wings of the Dove."
Copyright
© 2003 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Variety is a registered trademark of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc. and
used under license. All
Rights
Reserved. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction
or distribution is prohibited without permission.
|
David
Weddle Variety
Sun Jan 4, 7:00
PM ET
GIRL WITH A PEARL
EARRING (Lions Gate, released December 12)
Screenplay:
Olivia Hetreed
Category: Adapted
screenplay
Source Material:
"Girl With a Pearl Earring," novel by Tracy Chevalier
Storyline:
A 17th century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth (news)), forms
a covert relationship with a 17-year-old servant girl named Griet (Scarlett
Johansson (news)). He chooses Griet as the subject of his next portrait,
and exploits the sexual tension between them to coax a mixture of sadness,
longing, and frustration from Griet, which he captures on canvas. The relationship
climaxes when he presents Griet with one of his wife's pearl earrings,
and pierces Griet's ear so she can wear it.
About the
script: We often think of great screenwriting as tour-de-force dialogue,
but Hetreed's script focuses on the silences between people, the emotions
that remain unspoken because of fears or inarticulateness. Hetreed draws
attention to the small actions that reveal people's turbulent inner lives.
The dynamics of the Vermeer household are keenly observed. Vermeer's mother-in-law,
who at first appears harsh, is revealed to be fighting desperately for
the family's financial survival. In an era when American cinema celebrates
all forms of excess, "Girl With a Pearl Earring" demonstrates the value
of old-fashioned virtues such as restraint and understatement.
Biggest challenge:
"The novel is told from Griet's point of view, so you are privy to all
of her thoughts and feelings," says Hetreed. "I didn't want to use a voiceover
in the movie because Griet's an inarticulate, unanalytical character. So
I had to find visual ways of dramatizing her emotions and thoughts. For
instance, in the novel there's a fantastically erotic moment where Vermeer
has her look into his camera obscura. He gives her his cloak and says,
"Put this over your head." She puts it over her head and she can smell
his smell and feel the warmth because he's just been wearing it. It was
a fantastic moment, but you couldn't make that work on screen. Instead
I put the two of them under the cloak, and you can feel the sexual tension
between them."
Breakthrough
idea: "The book has a 15-year time jump in it," says Hetreed. "I decided
that that just wouldn't play in a movie. The sexual tension is so intense
that it's very important that the story takes place in a tight time frame;
it needs that intensity of the moment to make it work."
Favorite scene:
"There's a scene with Griet and Vermeer where he says, 'Look at the clouds,
what color are they?'" Hetreed explains. "She starts to understand how
he looks at the world."
Lines we love:
Van Ruijven, Vermeer's wealthy patron, who enjoys taunting the artist,
re what's going on with Griet: "Master and maid, that's an old tune and
we all know it.'"
Recognition
to date: Golden Hitchcock, Audience Award 2003 Dinard Festival of British
Cinema; cinematography, San Sebastian Film Festival.
Writer's bio:
Hetreed worked as an editor on movies for British television and went on
to write screenplays for several British TV movies, including adaptations
of "The Canterville Ghost," "What Katy Did" and E. Nesbitt's "The Treasure
Seekers." After completing "Girl With a Pearl Earring," she wrote the first
installment of the BBC's contemporary series based on "The Canterbury Tales."
Copyright
© 2003 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Variety is a registered trademark of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc. and
used under license.
All
Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
|
Trivia
The film was originally
slated to star 'Kate Hudson' and Ralph Fiennes and be directed by Mike
Newell. Hudson pulled out during preproduction, which resulted in funding
being pulled, and by the time new funding was secured, Newell had to move
on to another project. After a director search, Peter Webber was tapped
for the job and held auditions for a new female lead. He settled on Kirsten
Dunst, who then dropped the project in wake of Spider-Man (2002)'s success.
At this point, Fiennes had been waiting so long that he too had to move
on to other scheduled projects, and so became unavailable. Scarlett Johansson
and Colin Firth were then cast. Source: imdb.com
Goofs for Girl
with a Pearl Earring (2003) Continuity: Griet's ears are not suppose to
be pierced. After the (initial?) piercing scene (left ear), she turns her
head to reveal an already pierced right ear. Source:
imdb.com
Premieres/Film
Festivals:
Had the world
Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (7 Sept 2003) and was
featured in the Telluride Film Festival (30 Aug 2003) , Mill Valley Film
Festival (4 Oct 2003) as well as the the BFI/London Film Festival (30 Oct
2003)where the film was premiered in the UK/EU. The US premiere was held
in Los Angeles, CA on 10 Dec 2003
There were two
showings of the film which were followed with a question and answer session,
for BAFTA and Variety Screening Series. Mikimoto (pearls) was involved
in making the film and hosted a cocktail party in their Beverly Hills store
on the same day the film was shown for Variety.
Historical
background:
JOHANNES VERMEER-(Painter)
-1632-1675
The few known
facts about the life of Johannes Vermeer come from legal documents - marriage
and birth certificates; sales notes and letters of debts; the will of his
patron.
Born in Delft
in 1632, he was the son of innkeepers and spent all his life in this town
of 25,000 people. In 1653 he converted to Catholicism and married Catharina
Bolnes, a Catholic from a bourgeois family. They had eleven surviving children,
and lived in the house of Maria Thins, Catharina's mother. Vermeer joined
the Guild of St Luke as a master painter, having completed an apprenticeship
and now able to work professionally as a painter. He was also a dealer,
selling the paintings of other Delft artists.
He did not make
a living from his paintings, however, possibly because he painted so few
- just 35 are known to exist, and he produced only two or three a year.
He quite likely had a patron, perhaps Pieter van Ruijven, who bequeathed
several Vermeers to his daughter. Vermeer was also an art dealer, but his
primary source of income was his mother-in-law.
Vermeer's studio
was on the first floor of his mother-in-law's house and it is likely that
most of his work was done here. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interiors,
often of a woman alone doing something: pouring milk, weighing jewels,
reading a letter, playing a lute. It is not known who any of the models
were. They were probably all painted in the same room, Vermeer's studio
on the first floor in his mother-in-law's house. The room had three windows
and light from the northwest -- preferred by painters because it was more
diffuse and even. In most of the paintings the women sit or stand in the
same corner, with the light source from the left, so that the shadow of
Vermeer's hand did not fall onto the canvas as he was painting.
Vermeer may have
used a camera obscura as he painted. A camera obscura brings some parts
of a composition into focus while blurring others, as well as intensifying
colors. Antony van Leeuwenhoek, who invented the microscope and other optical
instruments, was the executor of Vermeer's will, and may well have introduced
him to the device.
Vermeer's death
in 1675, at the age of 43, was probably from a stroke or a heart attack,
brought on by stress. His family was falling further and further into debt
as the war between France and The Netherlands caused the collapse of the
art market when the generous bourgeois patrons lost their own wealth, and
the rent from Maria Thins' properties dried up.
Only 35 paintings
attributed to Vermeer remain.
 |
Despite
the detailed description of Johannes Vermeer in the book, we don't know
what Vermeer looked like. There are no confirmed images of him, though
in one of his early works, The Procuress, a man looks out at the viewer
from the edge of the scene, which in Dutch painting of the time was often
the artist himself. In The Art of Painting a painter sits with his back
to us. We don't know if it's meant to be Vermeer, but it gives us an idea
of what an artist in his studio might have looked like.
text
from http://www.pearlearring.com/vermeer/index.html |
 The painting,
Girl With A Pearl Earring, is in the Mauritshuis, museum,The Hagaue,
in Holland. It is believed to have been painted in 1665/6, but the
true identity of its subject is unknown. Experts think it is probably one
of Vermeer's daughters. Colin went along with that but Scarlett thought
the girl looked too sexy.
Tracy Chevalier's
novel Girl With A Pearl Earring has sold over two million copies world-wide
since it was first published in 1999.
Screen writer Olivia Hetreed
is the wife of producer Andy Patterson. They had read the book months before
it was published & persuaded Tracy Chevallier to sell them the screen
rights convincing her they would be true to the spirit of the book.It was
originally planned to star Kate Hudson and Ralph Fiennes and be directed
by Mike Newell. Kate Hudson pulled out which resulted in loss of funding
and by the time new funding was found Newell had moved on. Peter
Webber got the job and Kirsten Dunst, was chosen to play Griet. She
dropped out & then Ralph Fiennes also became unavailable.
Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth were then cast.
Peter Webber was directing
his first feature film . He had previously been an editor, & documentary
director & had worked with the producers for several years.He says
"I went in to pick up some German books that we'd been working with on
another project and I saw this postcard of Girl of a Pearl Earring, it
was stuck on the office wall. I was talking about the first time I saw
that painting in the flesh. I studied history of art at University and
we went on a college trip [there]. I was talking about this and Andy overheard
me. And then the next thing was a tap on the shoulder and he gave me the
script - I wasn't surprised at being given the script, I was surprised
at being given the job though. He rang up and I thought yeah, yeah, yeah,
and he said do you want to do it? I almost fell over."(Phase9 movies)
'Now I never saw anyone
else apart from Scarlett who could do the role. Having seen her audition,
I mean it was in a rather bland room like this, she completely blew me
away. ...She's an astounding actress for her age. She's got such maturity.
She looks like a real person as well. She's not like one of these ridiculous
skinny anorexic waifs... And Scarlett is just passionate, committed, intense,
clever and a great, great actress who can reveal what she's thinking on
her face... "Business intervenes sometimes, especially when you're
a first time director, you're not in a position at all to try to
get exactly what you want. So, to me, it was the happiest day of all when
things changed, for a number of different circumstances, and we were able
to get the financing, and we were able to do it with the cast that I wanted..."
(IGN)
Before filming started
Peter Webber and Colin went to Delft, a paint-grinding windmill
in Amsterdam & the Mauritshuis to see the original painting. "We talked
about everything from his walk to how we would wear his hat stand hold
paintbrushes" Webber said "and then to how enigmatic did we want him, how
mysterious" .(LA Times)
The movie was partially
shot on the set been built in Luxembourg for Secret Passage (2002).
Venice was changed to Delft. The shots in the square were actually in Delft
& the scenes wwhere Griet & Pieter walk by the canal
were shot in Damme, near Bruges, Belgium.
Tom Wilkinson, (Van Ruijven),
has been in two other films with Colin - Shakespeare in Love & The
Importance of Being Ernest
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Comments
on Colin
ON CASTING COLIN FIRTH AS VERMEER Peter Webber.It all happened very
quickly with Colin I seem to remember. We sent him the script on the Wednesday,
he read it over the weekend, we had a meeting with him the following Wednesday
& within about 20 minutes of the meeting he'd led us to believe he
was going to say yes.(to producer Andy Patterson) Did he actually say yes?
AP. He cut through
all the normal crap of these meetings & said "Look, let's not do this.
I want to do it, do you want me?" We said "yes" & then we talked about
the movie. It was so refreshing.
PW. Yes, &
quite rare because there is a lot of nonsense especially when you have
actors of a certain stature. I think sometimes though you get people in
a room & they look at each other & think "Yeah, we can work together"
production
team commentary from the region 2 dvd of GWAPE
COLIN FIRTH SEX SYMBOL AP:One of the great mysteries for men is womens's
reaction to Colin Firth. You suddenly discover when you change a shot that
a lot of women are so invested in Colin wearing that pashmina that, if
you change it or reduce it they think you're insane. It just goes completely
over our head.
PW: Yes, there's
something that- I mean ,I hired Colin because I thought he was such a great
actor; it was only later on that I came quite to realise the degree to
which he's loved & lusted over by a huge range of women out there.
DESCRIBING
THE SCENE WHERE CATHARINA TRIES TO DESTROY THE PAINTING PW:This is
the moment when we nearly lost Colin's eye, I seem to remember. ...Very
shortly there's a moment when they grapple in front of the camera. Now
we had spent a long, long time preparing the choreography for this becuse
she's going to be shortly waving a spatula around. They're very sharp so
we must have spent three quarters of an hour-- an hour very carefully deciding
how we were going to play this. She would raise her ar; Colin would raise
his arms to grab her to make sure there was no possibility of him being
stabbed by the spatula. Now unfortunately I changed my mind about a camera
position. That meant we had to slightly rechoreograph the position. I don't
know whose fault it was but people get carried away in the heat of the
moment. The choreography was forgotten & the spatula plunged straight
towards Colin Firth's beautiful & expensive face. (laughs!!!) Now not
only would this have been a problem for him if it had landed there, it
would have been a problem for us because we would have lost Colin, so Colin
thankfully saw the spatula heading down towards him. He managed to step
away & it did strike his face but it didn't go into his eye. It was
only about1mm,2mm away.He was fine. He stood there going "No, no, no, I'm
fine, I'm fine. I'm fine" then put his hand to his face & saw there
was blood & so we stopped at that moment. Thankfully we got the coverage
we needed to get.
AP:I think Colin
was-it was very funny. Once he realised it wasn't that serious he said
he couldn't really choose between wishing it hadn't happened & loving
the attention he was going to get for the next few days. production
team commentary from the region 2 dvd of GWAPE
'No
one does turbulent and sexy intensity better than 43 year old Colin Firth,
and the unspoken, forbidden attraction between the two creates the most
powerful study of erotic tension since Jane Campion's The Piano.
The
challenge was to find a way to really bring the characters in the film
to life and make the emotions as real as possible, and not just have people
walk out of the film and go "god, that was beautiful". We wanted them to
have a proper emotional experience. That's why it was so important to have
people like Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson in there because they pull
you in and allow you to identify with that world. I think we've all seen
period films where they look fantastic but it really is like watching paint
dry. And I was afraid of that, I wanted to plunge us into the art of the
time but I was afraid that it would just become a parade of beautiful paintings.
Without the emotional depth and resonance of the characters, I could have
made a documentary." Filmink 4/2004
"It was really lucky that Colin and I had such good chemistry. I
had seen him in P & P and BJD and he was very sexy, but I still didn't
know what to expect when I met him. He's such a genuinely nice guy,
so sweet. It was meant to be Colin and me in those roles".
"It's such a rare role because it's about her wonderful inner thoughts,
which is so appealing for an actor to play. There's no cheesy dialogue
to describe the way she's feeling," she explains, "I could just be quiet,
which is rare. Often writers fill the voids with awful dialogue that's
very hard to say." And there's no denying that the taboo attraction between
Johansson and Colin Firth is at its most electrifying in those silences.
You
magazine interview with Scarlett Johansson (supplement of the Mail on Sunday)
"This maturity also translates to Johansson's relationships with her older
co-stars in real life . . . Firth, she says, has "got a part of my heart.
He's a great guy and good friend. He never weirded me out." Los
Angeles Times
In the film version of this Cinderella-meets-Jane-Eyre story, [Griet] is
played by Scarlett Johansson. Colin Firth – cast as Vermeer – will have
to transform his customary Darcy into something closer to Mr. Rochester.
NY
Times 7 Sep 2003
His mysterious Vermeer may not provoke the same reactions [Darcy adoration]
-- the long hair, the subject matter, the non-romantic tone make it unlikely
-- although he plays the role with the same undercurrent of decency familiar
in all his performances. He says that he looks for that in all his characters
because it's an actor's responsibility to humanize the people he inhabits.
The
Ottawa Citizen 7 Sep 2003
"Colin likes to do a lot of preparation," says Webber. "We toured around
museums. We went to an old fashioned paint grinding mill in Holland. We
had a painting expert on the set, and we gave Colin painting lessons on
how you hold your palette, and how you hold your brush, just so we could
get those details right. We had an etiquette consultant who told us some
of the ways people would behave and how they hold their bodies during that
period. And he really did a lot of reading. I used to play this game with
him when we were having lunch-we'd get the Vermeer book and open it up
and I'd point to a painting and he would tell you which gallery it came
from. He'd go 'oh, that's in Dressel in East Germany'." Filmink
4/2004
"I
have noticed that a stillness descends when an audience watches the film.
It is partly to do with the spell of the film, but it is also the quietness.
Due to that level of engagement, when the film works for people, it really
works for them," says [Peter] Webber. "The repressional inability to get
what you want is the beating heart of this film. If Griet and Vermeer got
together, the film would be over. After all, the imagination is the bravest
and most important sex organ of all." Nina Chestney Yomiuri
Shimbun London Bureau
Tracey Chevalier:
When I saw him
on set and talked to him - he is so obsessed with Vermeer. One time I saw
him in the canteen when I was there and he came rushing over, he sat down
and said 'I can't find anybody who is as obsessed with Vermeer as I am.
I gotta talk to you about this, that and the other. And I thought Yeah
- he's on to it - this is good. He was really taken over by the part and
that I think is what needed to happen' DVD)
Peter Webber
(director):
After Ralph
Fiennes had left the project we thought about Colin straight away: he just
emits the perfect dose of virility and tenderness. I knew he wasn’t
arrogant and wouldn’t mind crawling into the skin of a more or less shadowy
character. (Humo)
He's a bloody
great actor. There' s not much to get your fingers into in this role and
I knew Colin wouldn't overemote to compensate for that. He also has a mystery,
a dignity, a sternness and a romantic sexuality that's particularly appealing
to women (W)
"Scarlett very
much wanted him on the other side of that door when she was shooting this
(leaving scene) so being the gent that he is he cancelled the plane flight
& made sure he was there. Something that really makes a difference
for actors because they’re not pretending. People think acting’s
about pretending but it’s not that simple & really having him on the
other side of that door just meant that the emotions that you see are real
emotions rather than fake emotions (DVD)
Andy Paterson
(producer):
One of
the great mysteries for men is women’s reaction to Colin Firth. You suddenly
discover when you change a shot that a lot of women are so invested in
Colin wearing that pashmina that if you change it or reduce it they think
you're insane. (DVD)
Scarlett Johannsen:
I was introduced
to Colin and I thought 'That's what all the fuss is about?'" She's since
changed her mind: "We had to do this exercise where we passed each other
in the hall. The first time was to be when I'd just arrived in the house
so I had to just duck into the wall and let him pass. Then we did it again
but as though things had already begun to happen between us and we had
to look at each other. That's when I knew this was going to work really
well. It was just so unbelievably electrical. I was shaken; it was almost
embarrassing. Yep the spark is definitely there. Thank God (Time Out)
It was
really lucky that Colin and I had such good chemistry. I had seen him in
P&P and BJD and he was very sexy but I still didn't know what to expect
when I met him. He's such a genuinely nice guy; so sweet. It was so meant
to be Colin and me in those roles (Mail on Sunday)
Colin was amazing
to work with - such an incredible supporting actor & he has such
a wonderful face to watch, sort of quiet brooding & enigmatic quality
that comes across not in a campy & kitchy kind of way, but it really
is genuine . It was lovely to see him on the other side of the camera.
(WYNC radio)
It made me almost
to cry to think such a nice and generous person really existed in this
world. We instantly became good friends starting to tease each other. When
I had to say a line alone in a certain scene I asked him if it is OK for
him to stand behind the camera and listen to my dialogue quietly. Then
he did it for me though he was off that day. (Ginza -Japan)
It became more
apparent to me the more we filmed how completely in love I was falling
with Colin as the Vermeer character. It became more and more apparent to
me that the Vermeer character was this sort of untouchable mysterious man;
this genius... And my character was completely longing and obsessive and
in love with this man. And it was actually physically heartbreaking (IGN
interview)
I don't like
to say a lot of nice things about Colin because he's got enough of a swollen
head. No, he's a doll; he's the best co-star I could wish for, so
responsible, receptive ,so tender. Because I was vulnerable I trusted him
in every way. (Herald Sun)
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Comments
by Colin
Please Email
me with articles you find. Thanks
"In
some ways," he says, "it's misleading to call Peter a first time director
because you know this man is so film literate. He's made drama, he's been
behind a camera, he's shot scenes, he's cut them together-he knows more
about film than most people. I've worked with experienced directors who
didn't have half his savvy." Filmink 4/2004
"I doubt if I would be doing Girl With A Pearl Earring right now if it
wasn't for Mark Darcy." The Ottawa Citizen 7 Sep 2003
Colin Firth had not read the book when Paterson and Webber approached him
to play the artist Johannes Vermeer, but read the script and quickly accepted
the role. He says, "It felt refreshing. It takes itself seriously, which
is not a popular position in most films - it is safer to have your tongue
in cheek these days." He regarded the role as an acting challenge. "Not
a lot of big things happen on the surface; the action is minimal, finely
focused drama, which must be made interesting by the characters." He adds.
"This has a parallel with the work of Vermeer."
"This was a world that wasn't as calm and tranquil as the paintings might
lead you to believe." The Ottawa Citizen 7 Sep 2003
Firth was intrigued by the man himself. "Not a lot is known about him.
He painted what modern critics could regard as clichés - images
reflecting the conventions of the time. But there is an even-handed moral
kindness in those paintings, showing humanity in equal terms to one another,
whether milk-maid or mistress. Of the 35 paintings known today, about 20
were painted in the same corner of the same room. He lived in a lively
household - eleven of his children survived, but he painted serenity in
his first floor studio. In 17th Century Delft artists were craftsmen who
took their civic duties seriously - they served apprenticeships, and had
a union to protect their economic rights. Long before the cult of the tortured
rebellious artist took over, it was perfectly possible to be a good citizen
and husband and also be a great artist."
"There's very little known about the fellow really." says Firth. "I had
to put my own pieces together and I formed various theories, but there
was absolutely nothing you can really settle on. And it actually drove
me bananas at one point trying to come to a conclusion and trying to pin
down some fixed notion to help me understand specifically what kind of
man he was." Filmink (4/2004)
In the film, Vermeer's studio is a quiet retreat from a noisy household.
Says Firth, "He is resigned to being surrounded by people who don't understand
what he does, and keeps his world separate. When he does allow someone
in for the first time he is intrigued that Griet has an eye for color and
composition and forms a mysterious bond across a vast barrier of class
and age. He is sometimes pleased with what she has done, and sometimes
rejects it. He attempts to distance himself from intimacy - it is too complicated
for him. He doesn't allow himself to focus on the foreground of paintings
or feelings for long, and so he doesn't find the same level of engagement
each time they meet. So the relationship becomes torturous for both of
them."
Firth found Peter Webber keen to explore the effect of different nuances
on scenes. "Where a script is so affected by tone, a change of emphasis
can completely change the direction of a scene." The actor points out parallels
between filming, and the work of Vermeer. "If you look at x-rays of his
paintings, you can see that he was prepared to begin with one idea and
then throw that away. This can happen on a film set. Working with a crew
is a huge collaborative effort. Everyone arrives in the morning and the
challenge of the day is to give life to the written word, but you have
to be prepared to change the ideas you brought with you that morning, in
order to keep the energy and carry the room. If you are in tune, you can
feel that moment. It's palpable."
Firth emphasizes that the film is not an art lesson. "It's an exploration
of how powerful a relationship can be - like the intimacy between artist
and model. A painting is unveiled and disrupts a family."
"Not a lot happens on the surface," agrees Firth. "The action is minimal
and so is the dialogue. But like many actors, I love doing less dialogue.
Because if it's badly written or cumbersome, it's utterly debilitating.
Obviously brilliant dialogue is a gift. But in this case it was actually
very liberating to have less to work with. I've never worked on a film
so affected by tone, where any slight change of emphasis completely changed
the outcome of the scene. And Peter was very open to exploring a variety
of nuances. As an actor that's what you're always looking for." Filmink
4/2004
Firth said that in the absence of material about Vermeer, he first looked
to the paintings for guidance. "I think I kind of got myself tied into
knots," he said. "There did come a point when I did stop looking at the
pictures and just sort of came down from the clouds a bit and just did
things that were practical. I could do all the research in the world and
could never do an average portrait. But I found I loved the very tangible
stuff of just mixing paints and working with brushes and canvases. I love
the materials. They're not things I work with every day. Actors always
have to pretend this and pretend that. If I can love mixing an incredibly
beautiful bit of paint and I'm playing someone who loved doing that, then
that's just a gift right in your hands."
"This was a man who painted seemingly serene pictures repeatedly, capturing
the calm of the moment in a house that is incredibly chaotic," said Firth,
who studied Vermeer's work in museums. "Everybody knows what it's like
in a noisy house. Everybody knows what it is to need to work, to close
yourself off in a room and have the sounds going on. Everybody knows what
it is like to have a bit of a secret life, a secret passion or a dream.
Looking from my own vantage point, I think one of the most interesting
things is that kind of creative intensity within a very earthbound domestic
environment." SF Chronicle
"I tried to be someone who watches, who's engaged in the visual world,"
Firth says. "The benefit of having artists like Vermeer in the world is
that, you know, he saw the world in a way that no one else did. ...
The way he treated depth and texture was unique and, you know, because
you've got these paintings, you can see like he sees..." IGN
Entertainment
Little is known about the Dutch master, who when he died at 43 left behind
a wife, 11 children, and 35 paintings, but virtually no record of himself.
Firth's suit & coiffure are the filmmaker's improvisations. Is
the hair real? ...."No," says the self-deprecating Firth, fondly twisting
a strand. "I think this is probably no longer possible." The
actor, who says he fell in love with the painter's work when he saw Young
Woman With a Water Jug at the Met several years ago, admits that he has
become a bit of a Vermeer nerd. But gathering trivia hasn't helped
him to demystify the artist. "I would love to know what Vermeer looked
like, and what he had for breakfast, and what he sounded like when he spoke,"
says Firth. "I'm dying of curiosity. But it wouldn't help me get
any closer to his pictures." Premiere, May 2003
Firth admits he was worried about how to portray the mysterious artist-who
left behind a few dozen masterpieces, but no real self-portrait-but he'd
come to terms with his own artistic limitations "I could do all the research
in the world and never do an average portrait." Premiere,
Sep 2003
Not normally such a compulsive, Firth says the research was exhausting
but essential to play a character who was, on one hand, a most enigmatic
and elusive man, and, on the other, an intensely eloquent and expressive
person -- at least his magically lit art suggests as much...."I became
consumed with Vermeer, yes. It was sort of like chasing shadows, really.
I felt I had to get to know him, but still maintain his air of mystery.
It was very helpful to look at history. But in some ways I don't know how
healthy it was to look at the paintings. They can drive you mad with frustration
because you can't get a handle on them. They seem to have some sort of
secret they won't reveal...."It's a mystery to me whether it's helpful
to the acting or not, to do this [amount of research]," the actor goes
on. "But it was fascinating to me. It was a diversion and a source of interest
and a great kind of perk of the job that I could throw myself at it to
such an extent. In the end, it was useless, however, to speculate too broadly
on what kind of guy he was because we don't know. He might have been someone
who never stopped talking. We didn't see him like that. In the end, I just
had to put the pieces together, and place myself in the middle of it."
"I don't think it's enough of a departure to call it a departure," he enunciates
in a voice that was trained for the British stage before it found its place
in a series of romantic films. "I've played a fairly taciturn character
in period drama before. But not quite like this."...Because not much is
known about Vermeer, Firth had to invent him from looking at his paintings
The
Ottawa Citizen 7 Sep 2003
Firth, grew up in a crowd of art students, but he says he was the only
one who didn't really understand visual art. He didn't know what he was
supposed to look at in a painting. "I panicked a little," he says. "It
didn't move, it didn't speak, it didn't sing, it had no narrative, and
so I used to wonder where this impact was supposed to come from." ... He
understood the impact for the first time when he walked into the Rothko
Room of the Tate Museum in London one day years ago and was struck by the
enormous canvases of Mark Rothko. Vermeer, he says, is the other artist
who engages him, although in a different way. The Ottawa
Citizen 7 Sep 2003
"Vermeer is much more obtuse in a way, much more inaccessible. And also
there's a whole bunch of paintings of women with jugs of water and writing
letters, and there's nothing interesting particularly in the subject matter.
It's all in the common currency. Other people in his town were painting
the same images over and over again. So there's just something in the way
he did it." The Ottawa Citizen 7 Sep 2003
There's a suggestion that the girl is tormented by a forbidden obsession
with the painter,and that Vermeer in turn found her a kindred spirit in
creating his art. "In the end, he sacrifices a lot of people," Firth
says. "On the other hand, he's in the grip of his own need to do what he
does. I can understand very well what motivates him. He wasn't some indulgent
bohemian." The Canadian Press 8 Sept 2003
In Tracy Chevalier's best-selling book that inspired the movie, dialogue
was kept to an absolute minimum Webber's film stays true to the silence,
which meant Firth and Johansson had the added challenge ofconveying their
growing affection through actions and a large number of penetrating looks...."In
this case, so much of the dialogue is interior," says Firth. "And it almost
puts you in the position of the writer of that dialogue, an improviser
of it. That makes what is said terribly important. And it makes the nuance
incredibly important." Globe and Mail 11 Sept 2003
As portrayed in the movie, Vermeer's relationship with Griet is loaded
with sexual tension, but Firth is convinced it was never consummated. "I
don't think he does womanize at all. I think he is utterly faithful to
his wife. His mother-in-law covers up the times she sees Griet and Vemleer
together) because his wife is extremely jealous, and the mother-in-law
knows there will be nothing but trouble."....Still, the scene where Griet
poses in his studio is awfully hot, especially when Vemleer smears red
paint over her lips. According to the movie, this accounts for the girl's
moist red-parted mouth, which leaps out from the canvas far more than her
subtle earring...."The direction in that scene was eloquent," Firth recalled.
"You see a brush going across her lips, then you see my thumb going across.
There was no more contact (between them) than that." SF
Chronicle
Although it may be less apparent in the film, Firth believes that Vermeer
did have a strong and loving relationship with his wife: "I think if we're
commenting on the relationship with his wife in our story, I think that
it's sexually alive. I think that he is devoted to his family. I think
that he's very, very rooted in the social order of his day. I think there
must have been very strong reasons for him wanting to marry her. He changed
his religion, he converted, from Protestantism to Catholicism and even
though Holland was relatively tolerant in those days, it wouldn't have
been an entirely easy thing to do at all..." IGN Entertainment
"This relationship engulfs [Vermeer] in the end, even though it's not consummated.
Something inside him dies." The Canadian Press 8 Sep 2003
Firth admitted that he had become the resident Vermeerophile. "It's a bit
pathetic, isn't it?" he said. "Extremely dull. I mean I would have to say,
by way of apology for that, that I'm not really that interested in the
dates and where the paintings all are and that — that's kind of a little
boy's nerdy game that I play with other people." LA Times
"I
actually went for an attempt at painting Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring,
but it was appalling," he says. "So I soon realised that it was pointless
to try and paint like Vermeer. They brought in an artist to supervise me.
She reproduces masterpieces brilliantly and she took me through the process
of what it would have taken to create these paintings. We literally went
through each step that he presumably would have gone through. And seeing
what a mess I was making of it, made me realise all the more what extraordinary
mess precision and vision he would have had to have."...So exactly how
would firth describe his artistic style? "It's the crap school of painting,"
he says. Filmink 4/2004
To hear Firth describe it, Scarlett treated him as an equal - that is,
she teased him mercilessly. "She reminded me that she had been in the film
business as long as I had," Firth says, laughing, adding that they were
as talkative off-screen as they were taciturn on. "She's one of the best
actresses I've ever worked with." Los Angeles Times
"My job for those first five or six weeks [of filming GWAPE], was to come
in on a Tuesday, and maybe a Wednesday and a Friday, do another look out
of a window, walk down a corridor, sit at the end of a table and then go
home again. And in the evening, we'd all go out to dinner and everyone
would say 'Scarlett was so marvellous today - this is going to be such
a marvellous film, well as long as you're good…'" BBC
Radio 1
More Comments
by Colin
On Vermeer
You have this
sense of quiet in the work within what must have necessarily been a chaotic
household. There’s no question about it with 11 children running around.
It was an active world. He grew up in a pub. The beer consumption was enormous.
This was a world that wasn’t as calm and tranquil as the paintings might
lead you to believe(Film Monthly. )
I think that
he is devoted to his family. I think that he's very very rooted in the
social order of his day. I think there must have been very strong reasons
for him wanting to marry her. (Catherina) He changed his religion, he converted
from Protestantism to Catholicism and even though Holland was relatively
tolerant in those days it wouldn't have been an entirely easy thing to
do at all..." (IGN. )
He painted what
modern critics could regard as cliches - images reflecting the conventions
of the time. But there is an even-handed moral kindness in those
paintings showing humanity in equal terms to one another, whether milkmaid
or mistress. Of the 35 paintings known today about 20 were painted
in the same corner of the same room. He lived in a lively household - eleven
of his children survived but he painted serenity in his first floor studio.
In 17th Century Delft artists were craftsmen who took their civic duties
seriously - they served apprenticeships and had a union to protect their
economic rights. Long before the cult of the tortured rebellious
artist took over it was perfectly possible to be a good citizen and husband
and also be a great artist." (Lions Gate)
On Vermeer
in the movie
We don’t know
much about him and rather than trying to invent a lot of characteristics
for him the mystery is preserved in the writing and I felt it was my job
to preserve that in the performance as well. So it’s as much about concealing
his emotions and his impressions as it is about revealing them. I think
obviously what he goes through is extremely intense otherwise he wouldn’t
produce the work that he does. But I think that he’s - it’s not something
he shares with people. I think that he actually was a man of great solitude.
He’s alone in this world of light and vision until she comes into it.
(Breakfast with
the Arts.)
"He is resigned
to being surrounded by people who don't understand what he does and keeps
his world separate. When he does allow someone in for the first time
he is intrigued that Griet has an eye for color and composition and forms
a mysterious bond across a vast barrier of class and age. He is sometimes
pleased with what she has done and sometimes rejects it. He attempts
to distance himself from intimacy - it is too complicated for him.
He doesn't allow himself to focus on the foreground of paintings or feelings
for long and so he doesn't find the same level of engagement each time
they meet. So the relationship becomes tortuous for both of them
(Lions Gate. )
Whereas Van Ruijven
would have violated her physically and traumatized her that way Vermeer
goes much deeper and has a much more lasting effect on her. There is a
cruelty in his relationship with her. It was more noticeable in scenes
where I was less patient with her and more unpredictable and capricious
but they had to be cut. I had to take a breath after the scene where I
pierce Griet's ear and walk away from her. Without needing to go into the
symbolism of what the piercing means it’s clear he's finally got what he
wants - and she's gone through God know how many barriers to achieve that
for him - and he's given her nothing. She thinks he might kiss her but
he just goes back to the easel. Instead of breaking down in tears as a
lesser actress would've done in a bid for an award nomination Scarlett
struggled with her emotions swallowed them and came back again to her dignity.
It was fantastic to watch (Interview.)
I think
he is someone who’s capable of sacrificing people. He simply has the kind
of ego that is driven by the creative process I think a lot of creative
people have an enormous self-centeredness. The pursuit almost requires
it perhaps and it’s often used as an excuse for the most appalling behavior.
He leads two lives, really (BBC Talking Movies).
In the end he
sacrifices a lot of people. On the other hand he's in the grip of his own
need to do what he does. I can understand very well what motivates him.
He wasn't some indulgent bohemian. I think I've made quite a mess of things
through life in that respect. I'm settled now - not how I was before. Doing
anything creative can be quite difficult for those around you. I don't
think you have to be a genius on the magnitude of Vermeer for that to be
the case (Province.)
I think the real
story to be told is what it's like to....to ...ache for somebody and to
be looked at or to have an obsession or to have a desire and a dream. I
think you get in to very tricky territory when the clothes come off and
two people who are clearly not lovers have to get into...cross that threshold.
So I think that a lot of the great literature and drama stops at the point
where the people come together for very good reason (Angelica)
On Scarlett
She has the
child and the adult in her. She can look ordinary or look stunning which
is an amazing asset for an actress to have. She can be aggressive and fearless
and she can be extremely fragile and vulnerable. And I think those are
the things you keep looking at and studying and wanting to get to the heart
of - and that's why you can watch her in close-up for hours (LA Daily News)
She's absolutely
fantastic she's one of the best actresses I've ever worked with. Before
I knew her I didn't expect such a mature performance because she was only
17. But you only have to know her for about half an hour and you start
to realise that she's a very sophisticated worldly person (Empire Online)
Somebody pointed
out to me that she was born the year I did my first film Another Country.
That was very distressing. Actually it made me feel like a dirty old man
in the role. Cinematic convention forgives an awful lot that real life
wouldn't -- I think it helped a great deal that she didn't seem like a
young 17-year-old (women.com)
alive and intelligent
and communicative. She treated me with a fairly healthy disrespect.
(USA Today)
My fear was that
the rest of the world would react to my wig the way Scarlett did. I'm doing
what I think is a sexy smouldering look and she's giving me 'I can't believe
its not butter' (Channel 4 Text)
As soon as someone
would say cut we'd start talking ten to the dozen because we both
are like that as people. It's quite ironic in a way that such a quiet wordless
film is made by such loquacious people (LA Daily News.)
About
the job
One of the wonderful
things about this profession is that you get the opportunity to indulge
hopeless rather nerdy hobbies and interests. For this I was allowed to
play with paints in a way I’ve not been allowed to do since I was five
years old ( Empire online. )
Learning to paint.
"At my level of talent it was almost pointless but what I can do is imagine
that I can paint and convince others to imagine that I can. I hold a brush
and mix paints to look as if I know what I am doing. Besides probably a
great painter and a terrible painter look the same holding a brush." (Lions
Gate)
I was going off
in a little room in the studio when I had free time and I would paint.
I didn’t want to be some guy who’d never been near a canvas. It helps to
get used to sitting there in front of this thing hour after hour. And I
did do that and it meant that it was second nature by the time we were
shooting the film (The Age)
It was a strange
job for me because I wasn't present for a lot of it. I mean I was and I
wasn't. I had to be there physically most days so I could walk down a flight
of stairs or something. It meant I wasn't really able to establish anything
for a long time but once we got into the meat of it in that artist's studio
between the two of us... I found that once we hit a certain tone those
elements just actually sort of dictated it. That's when collaboration actually
starts to display its benefits - we start to inspire each other. I found
that once we were at the proper work it didn't require great leaps of the
imagination. (BBC. )
It was a bit
worrying the other day on set. I was looking at Griet and going through
my own process and doing what I thought you know was wanted and afterwards
I got a comment about my smouldering look and I just thought 'Oh Christ'
(The Independent)
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Reviews
Johansson's brave
and intelligent innocence is nicely balanced by Firth's worldly, compassionate
admiration of his painting's subject. In another time and place, these
two would be lovers. But here, distinctions in class, religion and education
make this impossible; here, their passion remains cerebral and platonic,
though sexual tensions abound. The H'wood Reporter
9/9/2003
The film credibly
reconstructs 17th century Delft (in Luxembourg), and the “outsider” status
of Dutch Catholics (like the
Vermeers)
is subtly conveyed. But the central conceit explodes when the screen fills
with a close-up of the Vermeer portrait – it is tender and sensual, but
not sexual. Ultimately, it is hard to believe that Vermeer (who fathered
more than a dozen children) would be tempted by the winsome Griet when
the volatile passion of Catharina was only a few paces away.” Review
by Paul Ryan, Nat'l Art Collection Fund Magazine
Here are a
few. excerpts. There are any many more on the IMDB
Roger Ebert
I can think of many ways the film could have gone wrong, but it goes right,
because it doesn't cook up melodrama and romantic intrigue but tells a
story that's content with its simplicity. The painting is contemplative,
reflective, subdued, and the film must be, too: We don't want lurid revelations
breaking into its mood
New Yorker:
the repression going on between Firth and Johansson is more of a turn-on
than most of the hot news that movies like to bring us from twenty-first-century
bedrooms
Guardian. Peter
Bradshaw: A stunningly designed piece of work, with hauntingly beautiful
cinematography from Eduardo Serra of the sort that often gets called "painterly"
and here really deserves it
This film is
a tremendously intelligent and detailed homage. The production design by
Ben Van Os is outstanding.
Webber's masterstroke
is the use of Vermeer's eerie, empty studio, familiar from so many paintings
but here untenanted except for the uncanny, robot-like wooden life model
and, in one scene, the camera obscura device that is Vermeer's link with
the modern world of image.
Often, Firth
and Johansson will gaze at each other, silent, stricken, he out of desire,
she out of submissive deference, but it may be just that a sense that any
dialogue at all is too crude an intrusion into this visual splendour. Girl
With a Pearl Earring at times surrounds itself with an art-gallery hush,
but it is just so ambitious, and intriguing, and beautiful, you will find
yourself immobile in front of its canvas, drinking in the details
BBC. Susan Hodgetts
a superior British costume drama that expertly mixes art history with romantic
fiction….. this film doesn't just appeal to budding Vermeers but anyone
who likes serious, intelligent drama and gentle erotic tension
James Berardinelli.
Most freshman filmmakers don't come close to Webber's level of accomplishment,
and some of the credit must certainly be parceled out to the cast and the
cinematographer, Eduardo Serra. Girl with a Pearl Earring offers sumptuous
visuals and compelling drama effectively intermingled in a pleasing, satisfying
production.
Claudia Puig,
USA TODAY It's a measure of the mesmerizing power of Girl With a
Pearl Earring and the flawless performances of Colin Firth and Scarlett
Johansson that audiences feel as if they are spying on a moment of artistic
inspiration when painter Vermeer creates the title work.
From the Pathe
site:
Presse
Le roman du même
nom est un bestseller qui s'est vendue à plus de deux millions d'exemplaires.
Première
I thought it
was shot so beautifully with a great sense of atmosphere. The two leads
were fantastic. The play between light and dark, image and reality, love
and lust...fantastic Ezzie Chidi-Ofong - Glamour
Scarlett could
say more with one look than most people can say when they actually speak!
Rosamund
Witcher - Marie Claire
An intelligent,
visually ravishing adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel.
Variety
Gorgeous and
exquisitely detailed. Scarlett Johannson is luminous! Robert
Denerstein, Denver Rocky Mountain News
Exquisite! A
ravishing, breathtaking feat of imagination! Kevin
Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Captivating!
Colin Firth is sexy and forceful as Johannes Vermeer... Scarlett Johansson
- with the skin of a Renaissance angel, staring out at us as if through
the centuries - delivers an intense performance. Owen
Gleibermann, Entertainment Weekly
Breathtaking!
An intelligent, visually ravishing adaptation. An exceedingly accomplished
first feature from Peter Webber, with a wondrous central performance by
Scarlett Johannson. Todd McCarthy, Variety
Remarques
San Sebastian
2003 - Jury Award - Meilleure photographie
Festival du
Film Britannique de Dinard - Grand Prix et Prix du Public
AWARDS
Oscar 2004
Nominated
Best Art Direction-Set
Decoration: Ben van Os (art director),Cecile Heideman (set decorator)
Best Cinematography:
Eduardo Serra
Best Costume
Design: Dien van Straalen
Golden Globes,
USA 2004
Nominated
Best Original
Score - Motion Picture: Alexandre Desplat
Best Performance
by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama: Scarlett Johansson
Los Angeles
Film Critics Association Awards 2004
Won
Best Cinematography:
Eduardo Serra
San Diego Film
Critics Society Awards 2003
Won
Best Cinematography:
Eduardo Serra
San Sebastián
International Film Festival 2003
Won
Best Cinematography
: Eduardo Serra
C.I.C.A.E. Award
: Peter Webber
Nominated
Golden Seashell
: Peter Webber
Los Angeles
Film Critics Association Awards 2004
Won
Best Cinematography:
2004
Nominated
Alexander Korda
Award for Best British Film : Andy Paterson, Peter Webber
Anthony Asquith
Award for Film Music : Alexandre Desplat
BAFTA Film Award
Best Cinematography: Eduardo Serra
Best Costume
Design: Dien van Straalen
Best Make Up/Hair:
Jenny Shircore
Best Performance
by an Actress in a Leading Role: Scarlett Johansson
Best Performance
by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Judy Parfitt
Best Production
Design: Ben van Os
Best Screenplay
(Adapted): Olivia Hetreed
Carl Foreman
Award for the Most Promising Newcomer: Peter Webber (director)
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Favourite
Quotes
Griet to Vermeer: (after seeing her own portrait ): You looked
inside me
Griet to Vermeer: No, they're not white - Yellow, blue and grey.
They're the colours of the clouds
Van Ruijven: Distilled from the urine of sacred cows fed solely
on mango leaves. You've glazed my wife in dried piss.
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Favourite
Scenes/What to Watch out for
All the scenes with Griet & Vermeer, especially:
The clouds scene - he opens her eyes to their colour
The ear-piercing scene - spell-binding & very
erotic
Griet's departure - The most moving scene; she lingers &
touches his study door - he is inside but doesn't respond.
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Ratings
LW "rating system"
|
*****
|
Superb/breathtaking/heartstopping/etc |
|
*****
|
Excellent |
|
*****
|
Very
pleasing |
|
*****
|
Still
lovely, but . . . |
|
*****
|
Bad
hair day |
RPP "rating system"
|
*****
|
Colin's
looks |
|
*****
|
Colin's
acting ability |
|
*****
|
The
film in general |
|
*****
|
Ranking
in the films of Colin Firth |
|
*****
|
Watchability
& rewind factor |
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Weblinks
The official movie sites http://www.girlwithapearlearringmovie.com
Return to Main
Roles page
Return to
Friends
of Firth Periodicals Page
National Museum of Photography, Film and Television - Girl
with a Pearl Earring page
Order the dvd, region
1 (North America) and region
2 (UK/EU)
Lions Gate - http://www.girlwithapearlearringmovie.com/
Internet Movie database
-http://www.imdb.com/
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Credits
Unless otherwise
noted, text info from GWAPE presskit. (Thanks Caribou) Some text written
by Jennie
Photos courtesy
Lions Gate Films. Photographed by Jaap Buitendijk
Special thanks
to Mary Murphy for her inspiration
Research contribution
by Mari, Jennie
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|
