Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003)

Girl With a Pearl Earring Official Movie Site

Max Schreck as Graf Orlok in "Nosferatu" (1922)

Film Arts Guild

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

Film.com's FREE movie of the week is "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror." This 1922 classic of cinema based on Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (but with names changed) directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Max Schrek in one of films most famous and frightening make-up jobs.

CinemaSource

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: Dec 12, 2003

Running Time: 99 mins.

Country Of Origin: United Kingdom

Country Of Origin: Luxembourg

starring: Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis, Joanna Scanlan, Alakina Mann, Chris McHallem, Gabrielle Reidy

director: Peter Webber

Girl with a Pearl Earring

A speculative account of the life of Griet, a 16-year-old girl who appears in Johannes Vermeer's painting of the same title. Set in 17th century Holland, Griet is employed by Vermeer as a housemaid to care for his six children, his jealous pregnant wife and his uncommunicative mother-in-law. Tensions arise when Vermeer's wife suspects intimacy between her husband and the girl--and then climax, when the wife discovers that Griet borrowed her precious pearl earrings to sit for the now famous portrait.

Who knew there was so much melodrama behind a 17th-century Dutch master's portrait of a bejewled young blonde? Clearly, some thought, enough to make a movie of a book about it; mainstream audiences, however, may not see it the same way.

Story

In this Britney-and-Beyonce-obsessed age, 'tis a wonder anyone other than an art history buff knows who Rembrandt is, let alone that other Dutch painter guy--what'shisname, Vermeer. In fact, very little is known about the 17th-century painter, who died in…