|
Girl
with a pearl earring
|
Movie
| Book
| Author
| Director
& cast
|
Movie:
Girl with a pearl earring (2003)
Book: Girl with a pearl earring (2001)
Official
site: http://www.girlwithapearlearringmovie.com/
Premise
movie:
"Griet comes to Vermeer's home as an illiterate servant but her
duties take her to the Master's studio. Here she shows an
instinctive affinity with the artistic process and Vermeer arranges
for them to spend more time together. His obsession with her beauty
becomes obvious to Catharina, his jealous and possesive wife and her
scheming mother. Caught in the middle, Griet must also deal with the
lust of Vermeer's patron, Van Ruijven who agrees to continue his
patronage if Vermeer will paint Griet. Thus, the servant becomes the
subject of Vermeer's most famous work."
from:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335119/plotsummary
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Premise
book:
"One of the best-loved paintings in the world is a mystery. Who is
the model and why has she been painted? What is she thinking as she
stares out at us? Are her wide eyes and enigmatic half-smile
innocent or seductive? And why is she wearing a pearl earring? Girl
With a Pearl Earring tells the story of Griet, a 16-year-old Dutch
girl who becomes a maid in the house of the painter Johannes
Vermeer. Her calm and perceptive manner not only helps her in her
household duties, but also attracts the painter's attention. Though
different in upbringing, education and social standing, they have a
similar way of looking at things. Vermeer slowly draws her into the
world of his paintings - the still, luminous images of solitary
women in domestic settings. In contrast to her work in her master's studio, Griet must carve a
place for herself in a chaotic Catholic household run by Vermeer's
volatile wife Catharina, his shrewd mother-in-law Maria Thins, and
their fiercely loyal maid Tanneke. Six children (and counting) fill
out the household, dominated by six-year-old Cornelia, a mischievous
girl who sees more than she should.
On the verge of womanhood, Griet also contends with the growing
attentions both from a local butcher and from Vermeer's patron, the
wealthy van Ruijven. And she has to find her way through this new
and strange life outside the loving Protestant family she grew up
in, now fragmented by accident and death.
As Griet becomes part of her master's work, their growing intimacy
spreads disruption and jealousy within the ordered household and
even - as the scandal seeps out - ripples in the world beyond."
from:
http://www.tchevalier.com/gwape/story/index.html
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Author:
"I was born in October 1962 and grew up in Washington, DC. After
getting a BA in English from Oberlin College (Ohio), I moved to
London, England in 1984. I intended to stay 6 months; I'm still
here. My husband is English, and my son has an English accent.
As a child I often said I wanted to be a writer because I loved
books and wanted to be associated with them. I wrote a few stories
in high school, but it was only in my twenties that I started
writing "real" stories, at night and on weekends. Sometimes I wrote
a story in a couple of evenings; other times it took me a whole year
to complete one. Once I took a night class in creative writing, and a story I'd
written for it was published in a London-based magazine called
Fiction. I was thrilled, even though the magazine went bankrupt 4
months later. I worked as a reference book editor for several years until 1993
when I left my job and did a year-long MA in creative writing at the
University of East Anglia in Norwich (England). My tutors were the
English novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain. For the first
time in my life I was expected to write every day, and I found I
liked it. I also finally had an idea I considered "big" enough to
fill a novel. I began The Virgin Blue during that year, and
continued it once the course was over, writing while also working as
a freelance editor. I was lucky to find an agent relatively easily,
and the book was published in England in 1997. It got a few small
reviews, sold a few copies, then sank to the bottom of the pond to
live with all of the other unnoticed novels. (It has since been
republished in the UK, and published in the US and elsewhere.)
I began Girl with a Pearl Earring in February 1998 and completed it
in October 1998, working full-time. Two weeks later I had my son.
There's nothing like a fixed biological deadline to focus the mind!
I don't think I'll ever write anything so quickly again. Since then
I've written two more novels: Falling Angels, which is set in a
cemetery in early 20th-century London, and The Lady and the Unicorn,about a set of medieval tapestries. "
from:
http://www.tchevalier.com/author.html
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Director:
Peter Webber
Cast:
Colin Firth (Vermeer), Scarlett Johansson (Griet), Tom
Wilkinson (Van Ruijven), Judy Parfitt (Maria Thins), Cilian Murphy
(Pieter), Essie Davis (Catharina), Joanna Scanlan (Tanneke), Alakina
Mann (Cornelia) and others.
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