Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Olivia Hetreed, based on the 1999 eponymous novel by Tracy Chevalier.

Scarlett Johansson stars as Griet, a young 17th-century servant in the household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (played by Colin Firth) at the time he painted Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) in the city of Delft in Holland.

[4] In a 2003 interview with IGN, he said, "What I was scared of is ending up with something that was like Masterpiece Theatre, [that] very polite Sunday evening BBC kind of thing, and I [was] determined to make something quite different from that ...".

Released on 12 December 2003 in North America and on 16 January 2004 in the United Kingdom, Girl with a Pearl Earring earned a worldwide gross of $31.4 million.

As Griet cleans Vermeer's studio, which Catharina never enters, the painter begins to converse with her and encourages her appreciation of painting, light, and colour.

Paterson and Tucker promised to "replicate the 'emotional truth' of the story", and Chevalier did not seek to retain control during the film's creative process, though she briefly considered adapting it herself.

[14] Production started again later that year when the producers hired the relatively unknown British television director Peter Webber to head the project,[9][16] despite his not having directed a feature film before.

[18] Characterising it as a "coming of age" story with a "fascinating dark undertow",[8] Webber deliberately did not read the book prior to filming, as he was concerned about being influenced by it, opting instead to rely on the script and the period.

[16] Firth and Webber, both of a similar age and background, spent significant time discussing Vermeer's personality and lifestyle in the period leading up to the beginning of filming.

[8] As a result, unlike Webber and Johansson, Firth chose to read the book to gain a better grasp of a man of whom little information existed on his private life.

[9][16] The Australian daughter of an artist, Davis did not believe her character was the film's "bad guy", as "[Catharina] has a certain role to play for you to want Griet and Vermeer to be involved".

[25] Murphy, taking on his first period film role, was interested in serving as a foil to Firth's Vermeer, and representing the "ordinary" world that Griet seeks to avoid upon her meeting the artist.

[9] Other cast members included Joanna Scanlan as the maid Tanneke, as well as the young actresses Alakina Mann and Anna Popplewell as Vermeer's daughters, Cornelia and Maertge, respectively.

[26] The director was a lover of the Stanley Kubrick period drama Barry Lyndon, but knew that Girl With a Pearl Earring would be different; unlike the former film's "elaborate and expensive set pieces", Webber's production was to be "about the intimate relationships within a single household".

[12][29] Chevalier later remarked that Webber and Serra "needed absolute control of the space and light they worked with – something they could never achieve by shutting down a busy Delft street for an hour or two".

"[27] For inspiration in constructing the film's sets, Webber and van Os studied the works of Vermeer and other artists of the period, such as Gerard ter Borch.

[8] They built Vermeer's house on one of Luxembourg's largest film soundstages, a three-story set where they designed rooms that were meant to convey a lack of privacy.

[27] Costume designer Dien van Straalen explored London and Holland markets in search for period fabrics, including curtains and slipcovers.

[36][37] The soundtrack was released in 2004;[34] it earned a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, helping increase Desplat's name recognition in Hollywood.

The New York Times described it as a " gorgeous score ...[which] brushes in a haunted gloom that gives the picture life where none seems to exist",[39] whilst Boston.com said it "burbles with elegant baroque minimalism".

[40] Empire magazine called his score "a supremely elegant work" that "creates a captivating atmosphere of cautious emotion and wonderment, the true highlight being 'Colours in the Clouds', so simply majestic that it really captures the heart of the story".

[12] According to Webber, Girl with a Pearl Earring is "more than just a quaint little film about art" but is concerned with themes of money, sex, repression, obsession, power, and the human heart.

[49] Leitch adds the director "compromises by showing far fewer actual Vermeer paintings than Chevalier's Griet describes but lingering longer over the visual particulars of the studio in which he creates them".

[56] The Region 2 DVD's release on 31 May 2004 included audio commentaries from Webber, Paterson, Hetreed, and Chevalier; a featurette on "The Art of Filmmaking"; and eight deleted scenes.

[60] Historian Alex von Tunzelmann, writing for The Guardian, praised the film for its "sumptuous design and incredible Vermeerish appearance" but felt that "it's a bit too much like watching paint dry".

[63] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called the film an "earnest, obvious melodrama with no soul, filled with the longing silences that come after a sigh".

Despite praising its visuals, Abeel criticized Girl with a Pearl Earring for being "a chick flick dressed up in Old Master clothes" and for failing "to render Griet's growing artistic sensibility dramatically credible".

[64] Sandra Hall of The Sydney Morning Herald praised Webber's ability to "build individual moments [such as] the crackle of a bed-sheet which has grown an ice overcoat after being hung out to dry in the wintry air", but opined that he failed to "invest these elegant reproductions of the art of the period with the emotional charge you've been set up to expect".

[65] In Sight & Sound, David Jays wrote that "Johansson's marvellous performance builds on the complex innocence of her screen presence (Ghost World, Lost in Translation)".

[46] Jays concluded his review by praising Webber and Serra's ability to "deftly deploy daylight, candle and shadow, denying our desire to see clearly just as Vermeer refuses to explicate the situations in his paintings.