Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the 1999 novel by Tracy Chevalier. Scarlett Johansson stars as Griet, a young 17th-century servant in the household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (played by Colin Firth) at the time he painted Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) in the city of Delft in Holland. Other cast members include Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis, and Judy Parfitt.
Hetreed read the novel before its publication, and her husband's production company convinced Chevalier to sell the film rights. Initially, the production was to feature Kate Hudson as Griet with Mike Newell directing. Hudson withdrew shortly before filming began, however, and the film was placed on hiatus until the hire of Webber, who re-initiated the casting process.
In his feature film debut, Webber sought to avoid employing traditional characteristics of the period film drama. In a 2003 interview with IGN, he said, "What I was scared of is ending up with something that was like Masterpiece Theatre, [that] very polite Sunday evening BBC kind of thing, and I [was] determined to make something quite different from that ...". Cinematographer Eduardo Serra used distinctive lighting and colour schemes similar to Vermeer's paintings.
Released on 12 December 2003 in North America and on 16 January 2004 in the United Kingdom, Girl with a Pearl Earring earned a worldwide gross of $31.4 million. It garnered a mostly positive critical reception, with critics generally applauding the film's visuals, musical score, and performances while questioning elements of its story. The film was subsequently nominated for ten British Academy Film Awards, three Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Plot Griet is a shy girl living in the Dutch Republic in 1665. Her father, a Delftware painter, has recently gone blind, rendering him unable to work and leaving his family in a precarious financial situation. Griet is sent to Delft to work as a maid in the household of famed painter Johannes Vermeer and his wife, Catharina. On the way there, she stops momentarily at the compass on the canal bridge leading to the market square.
Griet works diligently and almost wordlessly in the lowest position of a harsh hierarchy. She does her best to adjust, in spite of the unkind treatment from Vermeer's spoiled adolescent daughter, Cornelia. While Griet is on a routine shopping run, a butcher's son, Pieter, is drawn to her. She is slow to return his affection as their relationship develops. As Griet cleans Vermeer's studio, which Catharina never enters, the painter begins to converse with her and encourages her appreciation of painting, light, and colour. He gives her lessons in mixing paints and other tasks while keeping these secret from Catharina, to avoid angering her. In contrast, Vermeer's pragmatic mother-in-law, Maria Thins, sees Griet as useful to Vermeer's career.
Vermeer's rich patron, Pieter van Ruijven, visits the household and notices Griet. He asks if Vermeer will paint Griet alongside him in a commission. Due to van Rujiven's previous scandal that resulted in him impregnating a maid, Vermeer refuses, but agrees to paint a portrait of Griet for him. As he secretly works on the painting, Catharina notices something is amiss. Her growing disdain for the maid becomes apparent, spurred on by van Ruijven's deliberate suggestions of an improper relationship between Vermeer and Griet. A conflicted Griet deals with her growing fascination with Vermeer and his talent while fending off van Ruijven, who attempts to rape her in the courtyard. Later, when Catharina is out for the day, her mother hands Griet her daughter's pearl earrings and asks Vermeer to finish the painting.
At the final painting session, Vermeer pierces Griet's left earlobe so she can wear one of the earrings for the portrait. Tensions heighten when she reacts in pain and Vermeer caresses her face. She runs to Pieter for consolation and distraction from her thoughts of Vermeer. The two make love in a barn. Pieter proposes marriage, but Griet unexpectedly leaves. She returns the earrings to Catharina's mother.
Catharina flies into a rage upon discovering Griet wore her earrings and storms into the studio, accusing her mother of complicity. She demands Vermeer show her the commissioned portrait. Offended by the intimate nature of the painting, Catharina dismisses it as "obscene" and tearfully asks why Vermeer refuses to paint her. When Vermeer responds that she doesn't understand, she tries to destroy the painting in rage, though she is stopped by Vermeer. She banishes Griet from the house, and Vermeer does not object. Griet returns to her parents' home, stopping to stand once again at the compass on the bridge. Later, Griet receives a visit at her parents' home from Vermeer's cook, Tanneke, who brings a gift: the blue headscarf Griet wore in the painting, wrapped around Catharina's pearl earrings.
In the final shot, the camera zooms out from the earring to reveal the full real-life painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Cast
Production
Development
The production of Girl with a Pearl Earring began in 1999, when screenwriter Olivia Hetreed gained access to Tracy Chevalier's novel Girl with a Pearl Earring shortly before its publication in August. The novel had not yet become a best-seller, but several groups were beginning to show interest. Hetreed loved the character of Griet and "her determination to be free in a world where that was almost impossible for a girl from her background". Anand Tucker and Hetreed's husband Andy Paterson – both producers with the small British studio Archer Street Films – approached the novel's author, Tracy Chevalier, for a film adaptation. Chevalier agreed, believing that a British studio would help resist Hollywood's urge "to sex up the film". She stipulated that their adaptation avoid having the main characters consummate their relationship. Paterson and Tucker promised to "replicate the 'emotional truth' of the story", and Chevalier did not seek to retain control during the film's creative process, though she briefly considered adapting it herself.
Hetreed worked closely with Tucker and Webber to adapt the book, explaining that "working with them on drafts helped me to concentrate on what the film would be, rather than how beautifully I could make a line work". Her first draft was closest to the source material and it slowly "developed its own character" through rewrites. She avoided using a voiceover, which was present in the novel, "partly because it would make it very literary". Instead, she focused on conveying Griet's thoughts visually – for example, in her adaptation Griet and Vermeer inspect the camera obscura together under his cloak amidst sexual tension; whereas, in the novel Griet views it alone immediately after him and enjoys the lasting warmth and scent he leaves.
The novel maximises the few known facts of Vermeer's life, which Hetreed described as "little pillars sticking up out of the dust of history". To learn more about the artist, the screenwriter researched Dutch society in the 17th-century, talked to artist friends about painting, and interviewed a Victoria & Albert Museum art historian who had restored the original artwork. Hetreed stayed in close contact with Chevalier, and the two became so close near the end of the production that they presented a Master class together on screenwriting.
Casting Originally, the American actress Kate Hudson was cast as Griet, having successfully pursued the role from the film's producers. In September 2001, however, Hudson pulled out four weeks before filming began, officially due to "creative differences". Hudson's decision scuppered the production and led to the loss of financial support from the production company Intermedia. It also resulted in the withdrawal of Mike Newell as director and Ralph Fiennes as Vermeer; Fiennes left the project to work on his 2002 film Maid in Manhattan. Due to this incident, The Guardian reported that it "now seems unlikely that the film will ever be made".
Production started again later that year when the producers hired the relatively unknown British television director Peter Webber to head the project, despite his not having directed a feature film before. Tucker and Paterson already knew Webber from several earlier projects; the director discovered the project by accident after visiting their office, where he noticed a poster of Vermeer's work and began discussing it. Webber read the script and described it as being "about creativity and the link between art and money and power and sex in some strange unholy mixture". Characterising it as a "coming of age" story with a "fascinating dark undertow", Webber deliberately did not read the book prior to filming, as he was concerned about being influenced by it, opting instead to rely on the script and the period.
The casting of Griet was Webber's first major step and led to interviews with 150 girls before Webber chose the 17-year-old actress Scarlett Johansson. He felt that she "just stood out. She had something distinctive about her." Johansson seemed very modern to Webber, but he believed this was a positive attribute, realising "that what would work was to take this intelligent, zippy girl and repress all that". The actress finished filming Lost in Translation immediately before arriving on set in Luxembourg, and consequently prepared little for the role. She considered the script "beautifully written" and the character "very touching", but did not read the book because she thought it would be better to approach the story with a "clean slate."
After the hiring of Johansson, other major casting decisions quickly followed, beginning with the addition of English actor Colin Firth as Vermeer. Firth and Webber, both of a similar age and background, spent significant time discussing Vermeer's personality and lifestyle in the period leading up to the beginning of filming. While researching the role, Firth realised that Vermeer was "incredibly elusive as an artist". As a result, unlike Webber and Johansson, Firth chose to read the book to gain a better grasp of a man of whom little information existed on his private life. Firth sought to "invent" the character and discover his motivations, and ultimately identified with the artist for having a private space in the midst of a bustling family. Firth also studied painting techniques and visited museums carrying Vermeer works.
After Firth, Webber's next casting decision was Tom Wilkinson as the patron Pieter van Ruijven, who was hired in late 2002. He was soon joined by Judy Parfitt as Vermeer's domineering mother-in-law, and Essie Davis, who portrayed Vermeer's wife Catharina. The Australian daughter of an artist, Davis did not believe her character was the film's "bad guy", as "[Catharina] has a certain role to play for you to want Griet and Vermeer to be involved". Cillian Murphy, known for his recent role in 28 Days Later, was hired as Pieter, Griet's butcher love interest. Murphy, taking on his first period film role, was interested in serving as a foil to Firth's Vermeer, and representing the "ordinary" world that Griet seeks to avoid upon her meeting the artist. Other cast members included Joanna Scanlan as the maid Tanneke, as well as the young actresses Alakina Mann and Anna Popplewell as Vermeer's daughters, Cornelia and Maertge, respectively.
Filming