VERMEER: THREE FILMS

John A Walker

VERMEER: THREE FILMS

John A Walker

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Reviews of three films about the life and work of the Dutch painter Vermeer.

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com). He is also the author of a text and a CD: How to Paint

Your Own Vermeer: Recapturing Materials and Methods of a Seventeenth-Century

Master, 2006; How to Paint Your Own Vermeer:A Painting in

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GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING (2003) The fact that so little is known about the life and personality of Vermeer and many of the people he portrayed has given novelists and filmmakers a licence to fantasise and invent. For instance, in 1999 the American writer Tracy

Chevalier's romantic fiction was informed by her reading of historical and arthistorical texts, especially Simon Schama's The Embarrassment of Riches: An interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987) and John Michael

Montias's Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History (1989). The latter scholar, a Professor of Economics at Yale University, is chiefly responsible for establishing the social context of Vermeer's life and times, and identifying his small circle of admirers and collectors. (1) Chevalier's novel was lauded by critics and became a best seller (it sold two million copies).

Olivia Hetreed then adapted the book for the screenplay of an art-house film (budget $10 million, distributed by Lions Gate Films and Pathé Pictures) with the same title after the principal producers Andy Paterson and Anand

The whole raison d'être of the film is to explain how Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl

Earring was created and so naturally, the film ends with Griet posing and being told to wet her lips followed by an extended shot of the actual canvas in which the camera pulls back slowly from the touches of white paint that represent the gleam on the pearl earring. In fact, the filmmakers were not permitted to shoot the painting in situ. Instead, the Mauritshuis supplied a high-resolution still, which was then filmed with a rostrum camera. Webber believes most gallery goers do not look at paintings for long enough and was delighted he had the opportunity to make captive audiences gaze at a Vermeer for a while.

Eduardo Serra was the cinematographer and his work was to be praised as 'breath-taking'. Serra is of Portuguese origin but lives in Paris. Like Webber, he had studied the history of art at university (the Sorbonne). Serra aimed for a naturalistic effect and used natural light as much as possible. He shot the film in widescreen to reproduce the 'frames-within-frames' -open doorways, mirrors and pictures-within-pictures -so typical of Dutch and Flemish art.

Filming took place not in Delft but on a pre-built set at the Delux Studios in Esch,

Luxembourg that had previously been used for a film about Venice. Delft does have canals but some outdoor scenes resemble Venice more than they do Delft. Naturally, the look of the film was heavily influenced by Vermeer's paintings particularly the interiors of the artist's house and his studio (a replica of the latter was built).

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