Girl with a Pearl Earring with Colin Firth: DVD Cover
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Girl with a Pearl Earring Director: Peter Webber Cast: Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt

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  • DVD Release Date: 05/04/2004
  • Original Release: 2003
  • Rating: Rated PG13
  • Sales Rank: 6,996

Viewer Rating: (17 ratings)

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  • Overview
  • Editorial Reviews
  • Scenes
  • Customer Reviews
  • Cast & Crew
  • Full Product Details

Scenes

Features

Closed Caption; Anatomy of a Scene (Sundance Channel); Trailers

Full Product Details

Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. New Maid [4:42]
2. House Rules [3:48]
3. Lady of the House [3:48]
4. Temperaments [3:35]
5. Labor [5:04]
6. Special Delivery [4:02]
7. Another Subject [3:02]
8. Meet the Parents [3:16]
9. Interesting Contraption [4:35]
10. Courting [3:01]
11. Eye for Beauty [4:41]
12. Color Mixer [3:41]
13. Changes [4:04]
14. Intimate Moment [3:55]
15. Delicate Work [4:15]
16. New Commission [4:30]
17. Web of Deceit [4:12]
18. Seeds of Hate [4:11]
19. Treacherous [4:29]
20. Dilemma [3:53]
21. Proposition [3:29]
22. Betrayal [4:24]
23. Memento [5:41]
24. End Credit [5:38]

Scene Index

Editorial Reviews

Scarlett Johansson, the "It" girl of 2003, makes a surprisingly effective period ingénue in this exquisite motion picture, which spins an entrancing yarn around the classic 17th-century portrait familiar to any first-year art student. Seventeen-year-old Griet (Johansson) becomes a maid in the home of married Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth), mixing paints for the artist, among other chores. When she displays an amazing affinity for the work, she eventually becomes Vermeer's model and muse. Beautifully appointed, incisively directed, and brilliantly acted, Girl with a Pearl Earring actually improves upon its source material, the richly detailed novel by Tracy Chevalier, which is a rare feat indeed. Peter Webber's direction must be credited for the subtle, understated performances of his principal players, who convey deep emotions with the simplest of glances and expressions. Johansson works well with Firth, and the Oscar-nominated costar of Lost in Translation exhibits a maturity beyond her years. Tom Wilkinson also supplies a fine performance as the lecherous, middle-aged nobleman who takes a shine to the maid. The individual scenes are leisurely played for maximum effectiveness, but at 100 minutes the film seems just long enough to put the story across without any dilution of dramatic impact. Tastefully done, and entirely free of the florid melodrama that turns period romances into smarmy bodice-rippers, Girl with a Pearl Earring is a credit to all involved and offers further indication that Johansson could soon become one of our finest actresses. Ed Hulse, Barnes & Noble

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Customer Reviews

• A Wonderful Film Not Just About Vermeer, But Artistic Inspirationby Anonymous

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December 28, 2006: Johannes Vermeer was a silent man. Being equipped with immense talent, brush and palette, there really was no need for words. Such philosophy is greatly dwelt upon in Peter Webber’s adaptation of Tracy Chevalier’s novel. The film is breathtaking alone in the fact that the production team, led by cinematographer Eduardo Serra, production designer Ben Van Os, and art director Christina Shaeffer, manages to capture Vermeer’s filling, oil-based colors, and light into every scene. The story is exemplary as well. We are taken into a brief era in Vermeer’s life in 17th century Delft. Much of the film’s premise is true: Vermeer was a reticent and brilliant painter who attempted to balance his genius and deep-rooted, innate calling to art and solitude with the often overbearing demands of a bourgeoisie, Delft society, as well as the malignant pressures posted by a sadistic commissioner, and the pressures of being the head of a massive household (when he died in 1675, he left behind his wife and 11 children). In 1665, however, he painted a mysterious masterpiece. It’s mysterious because much scholarship has since been dedicated to uncovering the identity of the model who posed for it. It has been suggested that the subject is one of his daughters, although this theory is met today with much skepticism. And this is where the film spends most of its fictional focus: that of creating an imaginary story to help speculate on what we know as factual about Vermeer’s life. Enter a young, beautiful servant girl, Grit (Scarlett Johansson), who through no fault of her own, finds that her classic beauty attracts Vermeer’s sensibilities—as a man and as an artist—to such a degree that he has no choice but to capture her on oil and canvas. Vermeer (Colin Firth) spends a lot of time in this film standing quietly in the shadows and peeking around corners. There’s great symbolism in many of these shots—his body is often half-covered, half-exposed, representing the dichotomy he must have felt in his life—that of being in perpetual conflict with his spiritual, artistic longings and the more human qualities of a man. Whereas Vermeer’ silence is a result of his being reluctant to communicate with the external world, mostly due to artistic self-absorption, Griet similarly is cut off from humanity, but rather out of innocence, naivety, beauty, and the unfortunate side effect of being at the low end of a rather oppressive caste-like social system where she has little voice outside of the disturbance her beauty stimulates in others. Together, the two characters find an unspoken solace, a type of kinetic energy that can only be conveyed through Vermeer’s art. Indeed, one of the film’s more touching moments comes when the artist reveals his portrait of her and Griet replies, “You’ve seen into me.” Another memorable moment, if not altogether breathtaking, comes when Vermeer is instructing Griet in how to hold her face at the proper angle in order to catch the appropriate reflection of light on her mouth, and also when he is instructing her in how to mix his paints and their hands, for a split second, brush together. It is in such moments that Firth brilliantly conveys the tormenting dissonance present in a man not in whose base desires are overshadowing his artistic being, but rather the opposite—as a virtuoso experiencing a rare moment of temporary...

Girl with a Pearl Earringby Anonymous

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July 08, 2006: Based on the book of the same name we meet Griet who goes to work as a maid for a painter to help her family and thus has an obsesser, a certain boy who she tries to find if she loves him or not and a "relationship" with the painter that is considered scandalous.


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