New Picture

The Pearl (RKO Radio) was almost as big as a golf ball. To the simple, impoverished man (Pedro Armendariz) who nearly drowned himself to bring it out of the sea, it embodied all but unimaginable wealth, and the promise of knowledge and freedom.

But as it turned out, possession of this incalculable hope brought only bewilderment, suffering, terror and tragedy to the fisherman and his wife (Maria Elena Marques) and to their infant son. Dealers tried to deceive them; ruffians tried to corrupt and divide them. The poor fisherman had to kill to defend his treasure and his own life. In consequence, the little family was forced into always more desperate flight through swamps and desolate country. The woman knew almost from the outset that tragedy was an inevitable part of such hope as theirs. The man had much to learn before he, too, was ready to give the..pearl back to the sea.

John Steinbeck developed his story from a Mexican fishermen's tale, and it was filmed in Mexico. As a fable of man's hope, it has a great deal of beauty, even elements of greatness; as material for a moving picture--a story to be expressively told in terms of visible action--it is close to perfect. Unfortunately this fine poetic idea is handled much too "poetically." The characters talk too much and their dialogue, pseudo-biblical in style, constantly undermines their believableness as people.

The good people are too simply good and guileless (in real life, the very poor are often very shrewd); the bad people are too simply bad. The camera work, highly accomplished of its romantic kind, drips with purple adjectives; it is profusely overappreciative of images that are beautiful enough to be merely looked at, without urging or comment.

Everything about The Pearl is done with tenderness and devotion, and is moving because of that. Now & then--during the breath-stopping dive for the pearl, the flight across the swamp, or a hair-raising moment when a scorpion crawls down a rope towards the baby--the picture comes fully and fiercely to life. But too often the film's makers confused genuine artistry (which requires a clear, tough sense of reality) with the woozily "artistic."

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