Toronto Silent Film Festival

The First Action Hero in the Ultimate Pirate Picture

"One of the silent era's most spectacular blockbusters
Fairbanks's astonishing acrobatics remain as dazzling and as fresh today."
The world's greatest swashbuckler, Douglas Fairbanks, takes to the sea with cutlass in hand for the first great pirate movie and a gorgeous example of early Technicolor.

The Black Pirate is the definitive pirate picture. Unburdened by a lengthy or complicated plot and reels of flourish, the film is unequalled for its humour, stylized acrobatics and sheer "joie de vivre".
This light-hearted but full-blooded romp is quintessentially cinematic as a totally stylized and self-contained universe; a synergy between swashbuckling deeds and romance.
Even though the pirates are archetypes of brawling, dyed-in-the-wool villains, they all bear a delicious edge of black comedy, not necessarily for the faint of heart.

On the other side is Billie Dove as the lovely but vulnerable princess but she is given not much more than swooning to do. Donald Crisp, as the pirate who befriends the Black Pirate, hams his way as the one-armed, bearded Scot. He made such a favourable impression that a kilted Scottish pirate became a regular fixture in later pirate pictures. All this was to support the only really important person, Fairbanks. Wearing a grin and not much else, he glides, somersaults, and cuts a swath through a succession of virtuoso set pieces, painstakingly designed to fit his particular style of movement and reach. Spending weeks in rehearsals, he makes literally every step, every leap, and every fight to appear as effortless as breathing. That plunge down the sail with his dagger-look familiar? It should be, it's been used in virtually every pirate film right up to Johnny Depp's Pirates of the Caribbean. It was done here first and best--in real time without the aid of computers or anything but sheer athleticism.

The Black Pirate was a smash hit when it debuted.

Photoplay (May, 1926) praised it by saying, "A roistering tale of the Spanish Main is 'The Black Pirate,' and I pity the man whom it does not waft back to the days of his boyhood, when he dreamed of himself climbing aboard the pirate craft and cleaning the seas of the bloodthirsty buccaneers."

The colour is nothing short of fantastic. Fairbanks attention to the details of adapting to the limitations of the early colour processes is the key to its success. The planning and experimentation with different colour combinations with the scenery and costumes. Severe technical difficulties surrounded the changes needed to film outdoors because the process filmed differently in the different light qualities. The end result was breathtaking and still quite marvellous to behold. The New York Times said, "The unrivalled beauty of the different episodes is mindful of paintings of the old masters . . ."

The film has been painstakingly restored to it's full 2-strip Technicolor glory from the original negative by David Shepard of the Film Preservation Associates.