GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING: Differences between the novel and the film.

 

 

Every time a novel has a film adaptation, the original plot suffers little changes that only the readers of the book can see and usually, makes them get quite disappointed. However, that was not the case of the Girl with a Pearl Earring adaptation, which was a very accurate adaptation of the novel that left satisfied most of the readers.

 

Despite of this, there are some little differences between the novel and the film that would be interesting to point out:

 

• Firstly, in the novel when Griet is sexually attacked by van Ruijven, the one who stops him is Cornelia, Vermeer’s daughter, by asking them what they were doing. While in the film, the one who stops the incident is Catharina, by calling out for Griet.

• Secondly, in the novel Griet decided to leave the Vermeer house by herself, after the painting is discovered by Catharina. In the film, Catharina orders Griet to leave the household.  

• Finally, in the novel it is abundantly clear that Griet has married Peter, and has had children with him. Nonetheless, in the film nothing is mentioned about Griet and Peter’s marriage, let alone children.

 

As a curiosity, just mention that the rags Griet receives the pearls in at the end of the film, are almost the same colors she describes the clouds are earlier in the film. She says they are yellow, blue and gray, and the rags are yellow, blue and white.

 

 

SCARLETT JOHANSSON (The other Griet)

 

Scarlett I. Johansson was nominated to the Golden Globe Award for her role as the girl with a pearl earring in the film with the same title.

However, her acting carrer is much bigger and began with her film debut in 1994′s North. After appearing in several films during the late 1990s, Johansson began to be known to the audience for her performance in 1998′s The Horse Whisperer and 2001′s Ghost World.

She won the “Upstream Prize” for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in 2003′s Lost in Translation. The same year, she was nominated for two Best Actress awards at the Golden Globes, one for drama (Girl with a Pearl Earring) and one for comedy (Lost in Translation). She was also nominated for Best Actress for both films at the BAFTAs (the British Oscars), and won Best Actress for Lost in Translation.

Johansson was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2004. In the same year, she starred in the films The Perfect Score, In Good Company and A Love Song for Bobby Long, the last of which earned her a third Golden Globe Award nomination.

In July 2005, Johansson starred with Ewan McGregor in Michael Bay’s The Island, making her debut as a female lead in a mainstream action film. In the same year, she starred in the Woody Allen-directed drama Match Point, which opened in December. Johansson received her fourth Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the role.

Johansson’s next film, Scoop, once again with Allen, was released on July 28, 2006. The same year, she appeared in Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, a film noir shot in Los Angeles and Bulgaria.  On January 14, 2006, Johansson hosted Saturday Night Live. Also in 2006, Johansson starred in a short film directed by Bennett Miller and set to Bob Dylan’s “When the Deal Goes Down…,” released to promote Dylan’s album, Modern Times. Johansson also appeared in the Christopher Nolan thriller The Prestige, which opened on October 20, 2006. She made a return appearance on Saturday Night Live on April 21, 2007, during which she did with Andy Samberg a new version of “Something to Talk About.”

Johansson next appeared in 2007′s The Nanny Diaries, starring alongside Alicia Keys, and 2008′s The Other Boleyn Girl, playing Mary Boleyn with Natalie Portman and Eric Bana. She has filmed her third Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in Spain with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Johansson has signed on for three new projects. She was cast as the femme fatale Silken Floss in Frank Miller’s noir comedy adaptation of Will Eisner’s comic The Spirit. She will also portray Mary, Queen of Scots in a film scheduled to begin production in March 2008, and appear as a pilates instructor in He’s Just Not That Into You, with Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston, and Jennifer Connelly.

POSSIBLE MEANING OF BLUE IN VERMEER’S WOMAN IN BLUE READING A LETTER

In my final project for the English for specific purposes course I have to deal with the picture of Vermeer’s picture titled. We can realize after looking at this picture for a while that blue is the main colour in the picture for it is not just the woman’s dress which is blue but also the chairs in the picture. Through using this colour it gives the impression that the woman is feeling and reading something sad.

In the English language, blue may refer to the feeling of sadness. “He was feeling blue”. This is because blue was related to rain, or storms, and in Greek mythology, the god Zeus would make rain when he was sad (crying), and a storm when he was angry. It might be a coincidence but I think Vermeer knew what he was doing and was really wise in the use of the proper colours for its pictures, apart from being an artists painting the forms, of course.

The only two colours apart from blue in this picture are black, which corresponds to the table and gold, which is the colour of the wall behind the woman and the map hanging on it. Curiously enough, blue is thought to be cognate with blond and black through the Germanic word.

Was Vermeer such a genius, or is it a coincidence? We’ll never know.

 

CAMERA OBSCURA

The camera obscura was an optical device used in drawing, and one of the ancestral invented objects leading to the invention of photography. In English, today’s photographic devices are still known as “cameras”.

The principle of the camera obscura is just a box (which may be room-size) with a hole without a glass lens in one side. Light from only one part of a scene will pass through the hole and strike a specific part of the back wall. The projection is made on paper on which an artist can then copy the image. The advantage of this technique is that the perspective is accurate, thus greatly increasing the realism of the image.

With this simple do-it-yourself apparatus, the image is always upside-down. By using mirrors, as in the 18th century version, it is also possible to project an up-side-up image. Another more portable type, is a box with an mirror projecting onto tracing paper placed on the glass top, the image upright as viewed from the back.

As the hole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but the light-sensitivity decreases. With too small a hole the sharpness again becomes worse due to diffraction. Practical camerae obscurae use a lens rather than a hole without a glass lens because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.

VERMEER’S TECHNIQUE

Vermeer produced transparent colours by applying paint onto the canvas in granular layers, a technique called pointillé. No drawings have been securely attributed to Vermeer, and his paintings give few clues to preparatory methods.

Some historians has speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura to achieve precise positioning in his compositions, and this view seems to be supported by certain light and perspective effects which would result from the use of such lenses and not the naked eye alone.

There is no other seventeenth century artist who from very early on in his career employed the incredibly expensive pigment lapis lazuli, natural ultramarine. Not only used in elements that are intended to be shown as appearance: the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light from the strongly-lit interior, reflecting its multiple colours back onto the wall.

This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer’s understanding of Leonardo’s observations that the surface of every object shares the colour of the object next to them. This means that no object is ever seen entirely in its natural colour.

Even after Vermeer’s supposed financial breakdown following the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) in 1672, he continued to employ natural ultramarine most generously, such as in the previously mentioned “Lady Seated at a Virginal.” This could suggest that Vermeer was supplied with materials by a collector.