ON A GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING...
Girl
with a Pearl Earring marked the feature
film debut of director Peter Webber. Having
collaborated with Webber in the past, producers Andy Paterson and Anand Tucker asked Peter Webber to direct the film.
Paterson explains that “although
this is Peter’s feature film debut, we had already worked with him for several
years, first as an editor (he edited Anand Tucker’s first drama Saint-Ex) and
then as a documentary director – covering a diverse range of subjects from
crash test dummies to Wagner.” His first dramas included the controversial Men
Only for Channel Four, charting a five-a-side football team’s decline into
debauchery and sexual violence. “Peter
was always going to make movies,” says Paterson, “His knowledge of cinema is
enviable, and it took no time at all for actors of the caliber of Colin,
Scarlett and Tom Wilkinson to decide they wanted to work with him.
Peter, Olivia and I all started out in the cutting room and we share a
fascination with the nature of story-telling on film.“
For Webber, who had studied
art history and was already fascinated by Vermeer, the story had the essential
elements for drama – money, sex and power. He says, ”Vermeer lived in a
household full of noise and chaos. He was under huge financial pressure to paint
more and faster, to feed his family. Yet his paintings achieve such tranquility.
I was thrilled by how Tracy’s story reflected his work, how the
intimate, the understated, somehow becomes epic.
Griet’s predicament is heart-breaking. The repressed romantic obsession
that builds between Griet and Vermeer inspires him to paint her – but the
perfection of that painting will lead to her downfall. She knows he will be
ruthless, understands that their relationship must be sacrificed if the choice
is between her and a truly great work. That understanding is, after all, what
drew him to her in the first place. The legacy of her time with Vermeer is one
of the greatest pictures ever painted.”
Webber also felt that many
of the paintings gave an idealized view, so he and production designer Ben van
Os introduced the gritty reality of the outside world by filling the streets
with livestock and mud.
The interiors were divided
into three distinct worlds. Griet’s family home is a monochrome ordered
Calvinistic abode in the poorer quarter; the Vermeer family lives in lurid
Catholic chaos with lots of paintings on the walls (Vermeer was also a dealer
who sold the work of others) and the vivid colors of popery; his rich patron Van
Ruijven’s world is opulent, with curiosities from around the world. This is
where the real power lies.
“I wanted the Vermeer
house to be chaotic – downstairs,” says Webber. “The house was full of
children and noise. It looked out
onto a canal which must have been very smelly. The main square with its taverns
and markets was just half a block away . Yet Vermeer created paintings which
seem to define tranquility and perfection.
So we were determined that the studio, the room that contained that
familiar, almost holy corner represented in so many of the great paintings,
should be the magical space. Up
there is Vermeer’s private world – a world which he gradually allows Griet
to share because she alone understands why it is special.
Ben built gorgeous sets, but he is also a great set dresser, making the
world believable, lived in and totally convincing.”