The Black Pirate

Douglas Fairbanks is at his most exuberant and athletic in The Black Pirate (1926), a landmark silent swashbuckler that helped invent the pirate-movie genre as we know it. Shot entirely in early two-strip Technicolor, the film still dazzles with its rich, painterly reds and greens—an extravagant visual experiment that Fairbanks insisted upon, believing color was essential to the romance and pageantry of the high seas. Fairbanks plays a wronged Spanish nobleman who washes ashore after pirates massacre his father’s ship. Vowing revenge, he boldly joins the very crew that destroyed his family, proving his worth in a series of breathtaking stunts: single-handedly capturing a merchant vessel, sliding down a sail with dagger drawn, and outfencing every challenger. Along the way he falls for a captive princess (Billie Dove) and must use both wit and steel to keep her safe until the final, rousing battle.Directed by Albert Parker with Fairbanks’s unmistakable producing stamp, the film is pure kinetic joy—elegant, good-natured, and endlessly inventive. It remains one of the most purely entertaining achievements of the silent era and a vivid reminder of why Fairbanks was the original action star.