A Pearl Necklace
1926 silent film

A Pearl Necklace (Chinese: 一串珍珠; pinyin: Yichuan zhenzhu), also translated as A String of Pearls, is a Chinese silent film shot in 1925 and released in 1926. It is adapted from Guy de Maupassant’s short story "The Necklace". The screenplay was written by Hou Yao and directed by Li Zeyuan (referred to as Lee C. Y. in the film), produced by Great Wall Film Company.
Synopsis
The movie begins with an introduction to a white collar Chinese family. They are living in a modern style house, and the husband, Yusheng, is sitting in his living room reading a newspaper. He is accompanied by his wife, Xiuzhen, and their infant son. Yusheng is an accountant and Xiuzhen does not work.
To celebrate a holiday with their friends, Yusheng and Xiuzhen borrowed a pearl necklace as an accessory, which drew great admiration from their friends. Xiuzhen lies to another guest at a party she is attending and states that her husband gave her the necklace. After hearing this, the guest has a thief to break into their home and steal the necklace.
The public source identifies “A Pearl Necklace” as 1926 silent film. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pearl, Necklace and silent.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q52592729. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1925 and 1926.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Pearl Necklace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.