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arts and crafts
When production designer Ben van Os and his team set about turning present- day Luxembourg into 17th Century Delft, the home of Dutch artist Jan Vermeer, they at least had a sort of head start.
The canals were already there thanks to sets built for Secret Passage, set in Venice during the Grand Inquisition, and filmed a year earlier.
So van Os, long-time collabora- tor with Peter Greenaway on films like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Belly Of An Architect and A Zed And Two Noughts (with, of course, its own Vermeer refer- ences) had mainly to turn his attention to the buildings.
Out went the 15th Century Venetian facades and in came a suitably Dutch makeover to recreate ye olde crafts town of Delft situated nine miles north west of Rotterdam.
Girl With A Pearl Earring, adapt- ed from the 1999 best-seller by Tracy Chevalier, tells the rich and romantic story behind Vermeer’s inspiration – a young servant girl called Griet (played memorably by Scarlett Johansson) – for the eponymous masterpiece.
It’s the accomplished debut feature of British director Peter Webber, best known to date for his short films and TV dramas like Men Only and The Stretford Wives. As well as van Os he also recruited BAFTA-winning director of photog- raphy Eduardo Serra (The Wings Of The Dove) to help him bring the world of Vermeer to life and light.
It is said that when cine- matographer Georges Perinal went to work at Denham Studios on Korda’s 1936 production, Rembrandt, he consciously tried to capture the ‘north light’ which famously illuminated the artist’s studio and paintings.
According to Serra: “At the first meeting, Peter and I agreed that the photography should never be too prominent, should never hide the story. I didn’t want anyone leaving the cinema to say ‘every frame’s a painting’ – that would distract from the story.”
“I didn’t do anything different from what I normally do. I usually
try to work as close as possible to natural light: if I’m shooting a scene with the window at one side, I want the light actually to come from the window.
“So it’s not that I was trying to replicate Vermeer’s work; it’s just that the way I work I have respect for the light and that nat- urally happens to be like the painting. Vermeer was extremely careful about reproducing natu- ral light coming from the windows and we know that he would have soft light because the win- dows of his studio faced north.”
Serra used different stocks for the different worlds, capturing the rich dark colours of the downstairs of Vermeer’s house and saving something for the painter’s studio.
Producer Andy Paterson recalled: “The shooting schedule worked in such a way that we saved the studio for last. One day I was watching the stunning footage from downstairs and reminded Eduardo of the earlier discussions about saving such beauty for the studio.
“He nodded that he hadn’t forgotten. And when I saw what he did in the studio, it was breathtaking. He took it to anoth- er level altogether.” Webber added: “Eduardo’s work was quite extraordinary. He had decided how he wanted every frame to look and seemed able to achieve it almost instantly.”
Fulsomely acknowledging the way Serra “created such beauti- ful light” for his sets, van Os explained: “The look of the peri- od is, of course, very well docu- mented in the extraordinary paintings of that Golden Age.
“We conceived Vermeer’s house to give us that sense of frames so familiar from the paint- ings; a passageway leading from the canalside into the courtyard and the ground floor rooms con- nected by open doorways, lead- ing the eye through the house to give a feeling of space – and lack of privacy. Griet should always feel watched.
“Peter and I also felt that many of the paintings gave an idealised view. We took the deci- sion to introduce a gritty reality,
particularly to the exterior scenes, filling the streets with livestock and mud.”
Webber added how he wanted the Vermeer house “to be chaotic – downstairs. The house was full of children and noise. It looked out on to 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 paint- ings which seem to define tran- quillity and perfection. So we were determined that the studio, the room that contained that familiar, almost holy, corner repre- sented in so many of the great
paintings, should be a magical space. Up there is Vermeer’s pri- vate world – a world which he gradually allows Griet to share – because she alone understands why it is so special.
“Ben built gorgeous sets, but he is also a great set dresser, making the world believable, lived in and,” enthused Webber, “totally convincing.” Quentin Falk
Photo main: DoP Eduardo Serra AFC; Scarlett Johansson as Griet and Colin Firth as Vermeer in Girl With A Pearl Earring; Production Designer Ben van Os
dutch treat
On creating that old master ‘look’ for Girl With A Pearl Earring
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