La perla ("The pearl") is a 1947 Mexican film. The story is based on the novella The Pearl by John Steinbeck, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the movie.
In 1945, Emilio Fernández, who was in love with Olivia de Havilland (Gone with the Wind), thought she was the ideal actress to play the starring role of this movie. He planned to produce the film for Óscar Dancigers, the Franco-Russian head of Águila Films who had arrived in Mexico three years earlier escaping the horrors of war in Europe. Dancigers prepared the production of the film with a script written by Fernández and Steinbeck, the author of the novel of the same name (The Pearl), in both Spanish and English versions.
After the success of this costly film, Dancigers became one of the most important producers of the Cinema of Mexico and Fernández obtained international recognition. De Havilland never knew of the love of Fernández but he was able to get the government of Mexico City to change the name of the street he grew up on to Dulce Olivia ("Sweet Olivia").
In 2002, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Read more about La Perla: Plot