Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Black Pirate (1926)

Douglas Fairbanks wanted to make the ultimate pirate picture. He also wanted a story that would give audiences more of the swashbuckling hero they had come to expect. The Black Pirate (1926) does not disappoint. As in Robin Hood (1922), Sam de Grasse makes an excellent villain. Future Academy Award winner Donald Crisp portrays a highly unusual Scottish pirate, sympathetic to Fairbanks. Billie Dove plays another of Fairbanks’ frail and swooning love interests.

A marauding group of pirates terrorize the seas, sinking the ship Fairbanks and his father are travelling on. Washed ashore — the only survivors — Fairbanks’ father succombs to death. Doug swears vengeance upon the pirates responsible, who have conveniently come ashore to bury their loot. Fairbanks convinces the pirates to allow him to join their lot, despite the suspicions of de Grasse. Doug convinces the entire band of pirates of his value as a leader when, on a wager, he single-handedly captures their next ship of prey. Fairbanks then calculates an elaborate plan to capture the pirates, while maintaining Billie Dove’s virtue on a ship of horny lechers. High action, great stunts and a few comic moments follow. The film is on a high par with the other great Fairbanks films of the 1920s.

Fairbanks was breaking ground in a modest way when he decided to produce The Black Pirate entirely in Technicolor. A small number of previous feature films had already been produced in the relatively new color process, but his was the first major feature film produced in Technicolor. The process was expensive and technical refinements were still being made as production problems were encountered. Hedging his bet on the color process, Fairbanks also prudently shot the film in black & white. If his Technicolor experiment became a disaster, a traditional tinted black & white version could be released and the movie-going public would be none the wiser. Thus two complete versions of The Black Pirate have survived. (A third version of the film was created when a narrated sound film rerelease of the black & white version was released decades later.)

The Technicolor process required vast amounts of light on the sets and actors to pass their images through a special camera lens prism and color filters and still register on the negative filmstock. Meanwhile black & white cameras (with their light-admitting apertures adjusted for the brighter-than-usual light levels) ground side-by-side with the Technicolor camera to capture the same performances on the domestic negative and, in another camera, the export negative. The differences between the two surviving versions are minor, mostly in slight camera angle differences, but the final edited continuity is virtually the same.

To inexperienced eyes, early Technicolor is difficult to distinguish from the colorized films that plagued the home video market some 20 to 25 years ago. The impression should not be given that one may expect the rich Technicolor of Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz. Early Technicolor utilized orangey-red and bluish-green dyes to obtain a fairly accurate flesh tone (the first objective of the color process). This left many colors inadequately or completely unregistered. The results made red and green easy to capture on film, hence the unusual amount of the two colors in the cast’s wardrobe and on the settings. The Black Pirate appears at times to be little more than a murky brownish color. Only in the early 1930s was the final component (yellow) successfully integrated into the process.

— Carl Bennett

Kino International’s Blu-ray Disc edition of The Black Pirate features a 1080p high-definition video transfer of the restored 35mm two-strip Technicolor version of the film.

From the beginning of the Technicolor footage, one is struck by the visual improvements in this high-definition edition. The increased resolution allows viewers to clearly see that the pirate captain is sporting a chest tattoo of a hand holding a weighing scale, and long diagonals of rope cutting through the frame no longer create rainbows of color noise as they move about with the rocking of the ship. The new video transfer sacrifices deep blacks (black blacks in video monitors is an overrated technical specification in today’s television systems) in the picture for the sake of pulling out image details in the shadows. The results are admirable and satisfying, as one can now clearly see Charles Stevens moving around the captured ship’s powder magazine preparing to blow it up, or clearly identify Sam de Grasse and Donald Crisp in broadside long shots. Kino’s previous DVD editions lost image details in dark, plugged-up shadows and indistinct lower-resolution transfer images.

The color saturation in the new video transfer is slightly paler than in Kino’s previous DVD editions, making this film in the early Technicolor process look a little more pastel here than in our memories of a film that has always looked more pale and pinkish than other Technicolor films of the time. One black & white shot, at 23:35, appears to have been inserted from the black & white version of the film.

The film is presented with the Robert Israel arranged and conducted version of the original Mortimer Wilson music score that was originally recorded for Kino’s 1996 laserdisc and VHS editions, now presented here in clearer audio fidelity. An optional theater pipe organ music score performed by Lee Erwin is also available (likely originally recorded in the 1970s) — a fitting testament to the late Erwin’s high reputation as a musical performer.

An alternate version of the film is presented in its sound version rerelease, with a synchronized orchestral music score and effects soundtrack. Also transferred in high-definition, this version removed the intertitles (most of them, not all) from the black & white version of the film, relying on narration by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (really? — it doesn’t sound like him) for exposition and dialogue.

This Kino Blu-ray Disc edition retains the supplemental content of their previous DVD editions: a full-length audio commentary by Rudy Behlmer, a section of production outtakes (transferred in standard resolution) and stills, narrated by Rudy Behlmer, takes a behind-the-scenes look at the production of The Black Pirate (18 minutes), and an additional section of outtakes (transferred in standard resolution) from the Library of Congress without commentary (29 minutes). Several of the stunts and special effects are seen in their rejected form, giving the viewer an insight into the technical production problems that had to be overcome.

The substantial and thrilling improvement in visual quality in this high-definition edition of The Black Pirate makes it worth investing in a Blu-ray Disc player and an HD monitor for those collectors who have been holding out, just waiting for a good reason. This edition remains highly recommended as the best home video edition of The Black Pirate and slightly favored over the Cohen BD edition noted below for its inclusion of the black & white rerelease version and the Lee Erwin score.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
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This Blu-ray Disc edition has been prepared from a 35mm color negative at high-definition. As with the Kino BD edition noted above, the color saturation is slightly paler and pinkish than in the Kino DVD editions noted below, making this film in the early Technicolor process look a little more pastel here than in our memories of a film that has always looked more pale and pinkish than other Technicolor films of the time. One black & white shot, at 23:37, appears to have been inserted from the black & white version of the film. It should also be noted that the picture is cropped slightly tighter at the top and bottom of the image as compared to the Kino DVD editions noted on this page. Ultimately, it appears that this Cohen edition utilizes the same master as the Kino BD edition — this only difference being the lower video bit rate.

The film is presented with the Robert Israel arranged and conducted version of the original Mortimer Wilson music score in DTS-HD Master Audio stereo.

This Cohen Blu-ray Disc edition features the supplemental content of the previous Blu-ray Disc and DVD editions from Kino Lorber: a full-length audio commentary by Rudy Behlmer, a section of production outtakes (transferred in standard resolution) and stills, narrated by Rudy Behlmer, takes a behind-the-scenes look at the production of The Black Pirate (18 minutes), and an additional section of outtakes (transferred in standard resolution) from the Library of Congress without commentary (29 minutes). Several of the stunts and special effects are seen in their rejected form, giving the viewer an insight into the technical production problems that had to be overcome.

If you already own the 2010 Kino Blu-ray Disc edition, you may not need this Cohen BD edition for your collection. If you do not currently own the film or only have a DVD edition, consider adding this BD upgrade to your stash.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The video transfer appears to be the same as has previously appeared on Republic Pictures Home Video laserdisc and videotape editions of The Black Pirate. That transfer, from a 35mm preservation print in the Paul Killiam collection of the black & white version of the film, is identical to the one on this DVD edition (both of them cropped identically and running at the same speed), with the exception that the color tones of the two transfers are different. The qualities of the two transfers are also identical, being slightly contrasty, soft of image detail and some exposure fluctuations. With the oversaturation of the color toning on all of the Republic Pictures silent film releases on home video, this DVD edition is slightly more pleasant viewing despite the relatively low DVD video bit rate of 3Mb per second, the occasional color noise of older analog video masters, and the slightly more burnt-out highlights.

The musical accompaniment on the DVD is a generic orchestral score cobbled together from existing recordings rather than the mono piano score by William Perry that was released with the Killiam preservation print.

While it is not the best example of DVD production, this edition is an OK record of the black & white version of The Black Pirate.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

We suspect, given what information is available and from the price attached to this edition, that it has been mastered from a color-toned 16mm reduction print of the black & white version of The Black Pirate.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

Passport Video productions usually maintain a nonremoveable logomark in the lower right-hand corner of the picture throughout the film’s presentation.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The set is filled out with 27 other films and television episodes for a 1099-minute boxset running time.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other TECHNICOLOR FILMS of the silent era available on home video.