The Black Pirate

Douglas Fairbanks, the cinema's first great action hero and silent era's finest swashbuckler, laid claim to the pirate movie with this rousing 1926 adventure, in which he leaps, lunges, charges, and duels his way through the world of high-seas criminals with the swagger and confident grin of a man who thinks he owns the place. Fairbanks plays Michel, the last survivor of a ship captured and destroyed by seafaring robbers, who takes revenge against the marauders by posing as one of them. Director Albert Parker packs plenty of now longstanding clichés into the film—from saber duels to walking the plank—while also showcasing his lead's acrobatic talents and boisterous presence, such as when Fairbanks as the resourceful Black Pirate singlehandedly captures a vessel without taking a life and saves a lovely princess (Billie Dove) onboard. The Black Pirate is one of the only surviving silent pictures shot in the two-strip Technicolor process, which gives it the texture of a hand-painted vintage postcard, softened and faded to pastel-like hues, beautifully rendered in this newly remastered Blu-ray edition created from a restored 35mm negative. Featuring two soundtracks (Robert Israel conducting the original score, and an archival organ score by Lee Erwin), Blu-ray extras include a black-and-white “talkie” version of the film for a sound-era re-release (with narration by Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), audio commentary by film historian Rudy Behlmer, outtakes (some with commentary by Behlmer), and a photo gallery. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)