La perla (The Pearl) is a 1947 Mexican-American film directed by Emilio Fernández.

It is based on the 1947 novella The Pearl by John Steinbeck, who also co-wrote the screenplay along with Fernández and Jack Wagner.

In a fishing village in La Paz, Mexico, pearl fisherman Kino and his wife Juana are in anguish because their infant son Juanito was stung by a scorpion.

Later, the doctor and his brother, a loan shark, meet Kino after he finds a valuable pearl and they decide to steal it from him.

But Kino refuses to listen, hoping that the pearl will change their lives once he sells it.

At the end Kino and Juana throw the pearl off of the highest ledge to get rid of it.

And extraordinary it is in content through the benefit of a story of primitive power, told with immaculate integrity through an eloquent camera.