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.

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 10 to 15 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

2004 Kino International edition

The Black Pirate (1926), color, 94 minutes, not rated.

Kino International, unknown catalog number, unknown UPC number.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, dual-layered? DVD disc, Region 1, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, chapter stops, keep case, $29.95.
DVD release date: 3 February 2004.
Country of origin: USA

Kino International has rereleased their edition of The Black Pirate. We suspect that this new disc is largely the same in content as the 1999 edition below, with likely remastering that could result in a higher video bit rate and slightly better picture.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

1999 Kino International edition

The Black Pirate (1926), color, 94 minutes, not rated.

Image Entertainment, K112DVD, UPC 7-38329-01122-2.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, single-layered DVD disc, Region 0, 4.5 Mbps average video bit rate, 224 kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo and mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, chapter stops, snapper case, $24.99.
DVD release date: 13 August 1999.
Country of origin: USA

Over the past 15 years, we have been excited by the release of any silent era Technicolor footage. Home video editions of silent films began appearing with original Technicolor sections intact. The home video edition of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) was glorious. The videocassette edition of The Wedding March (1928) became a treasured find. The 1990 laserdisc version of The Phantom of the Opera (1925) was a revelation. Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances (1925) featured rough Technicolor footage. But, there was little hope of much else. Lillian Gish’s Annie Laurie (1927) had been found and restored with the Technicolor sequences intact, but there would be no news of the film coming to home video. Early Technicolor fans had to be satisfied with occasional American Movie Classics showings of the early talkies The King of Jazz (1930) and Whoopee (1930).

There seemed to be little hope that early Technicolor features such as The Toll of the Sea (1922), Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924), The Water Hole (1928) or The Black Pirate (1926) would be released on home video. (Ah! But The Toll of the Sea finally appeared in the DVD collection Treasures from American Film Archives!) A small videotape distributor released an awful, washed-out edition of the Technicolor Black Pirate, which gave little impression of the film’s previous glory. A quality home video edition would surface in the form of the Republic Pictures Home Video color-tinted laserdisc of the black & white version of the film. Still, hope remained that a high-quality edition of the color version would someday be produced. In 1996 the Kino International Technicolor edition, produced for home video by David Shepard, premiered on laserdisc and videotape.

This DVD presentation of The Black Pirate appears to have been assembled from as many as three different source materials. All appear to be in excellent condition, as there is no jarring contrast between the quality of one print and another. (An intriguing question is: Have the original Technicolor negatives to The Black Pirate survived? If so, new IB Technicolor prints could be struck that would give us the colors of the original prints.) Very little speckling is evident in the prints utilized for the video transfer, and there are very few Technicolor green or red print defects. Picture detail is very good to excellent and the framing is always generous.

There were still problems with the Technicolor process. We assume some of those problems are evident in the finished Black Pirate. Early in the film, exteriors are washed-out to an unsaturated and grayish (almost black & white) color. Some interiors are hard to pick picture details out of the deep shadows. But we nitpick. Overall this video edition on DVD looks better than any other presentation of The Black Pirate we have ever seen, including a showing on 35mm film. Colors still look a little pale compared to Ben-Hur or The Phantom of the Opera (or even The King of Jazz), but, we like to simply boost our television’s color saturation a modest 5 percent to reach a pleasing color level.

We are, once again, very pleased with the work of Robert Israel, who has conducted a small orchestra performing the original 1926 music score composed by Mortimer Wilson. The soundtrack in digital stereo is well recorded and always a wonderful accompaniment to this entertaining film.

A supplementary section of production outtakes and stills, narrated by Rudy Behlmer, takes a behind-the-scenes look at the production of The Black Pirate. Several of the stunts and special effects are seen in their rejected form, giving the viewer an insight into the technical problems that had to be overcome.

This edition of The Black Pirate is more evidence that David Shepard is a dedicated silent film enthusiast, who does all that he can to bring quality presentations of silent era films to home video audiences. We recommend this film as fine motion picture entertainment and also this DVD edition as the best version we have seen of The Black Pirate.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

2005 Delta Entertainment edition

The Black Pirate (1926), black & white, 82 minutes, not rated.

Delta Entertainment, 82 346, UPC 0-18111-23469-6.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, single-layered DVD disc, Region 0, ? Mbps average video bit rate, ? kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 17 chapter stops, keep case, $6.99.
DVD release date: 29 November 2005.
Country of origin: USA

Ratings (1-10): video: 5 / audio: 5 / additional content: 0 / overall: 5.

This budget edition has been mastered from a good 16mm reduction print of the black & white version of the film, and is presented here without the color-tones of the Navarre edition noted below.

The image detail is only good, with often contrasty graytones plugging up the shadows and blasting out highlights.

The film is accompanied by a cobbled-together orchestral music score that is not synchronized to the film’s action and only occasionally seems appropriate to the scene being viewed.

While not ideal, this Delta edition and the Navarre edition below provide a collector an OK record of the black & white version of the film.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

2002 Navarre Corporation edition

The Black Pirate (1926), color-toned black & white, 83 minutes, not rated, with The Iron Mask (1929), black & white, 72 minutes, not rated, and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), black & white, 98 minutes, not rated.

Navarre Corporation, 1624, UPC 7-41027-16249-3.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, one single-sided, dual-layered DVD disc, Region 1, 3 Mbps average video bit rate, 192 kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 mono sound, English language intertitles, no foreign language subtitles, 12 chapter stops, keep case, $9.98.
DVD release date: 12 March 2002.
Country of origin: USA

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 (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 new DVD edition is more pleasant viewing despite the relatively low DVD video bit rate of 3Mb per second 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 at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

Information on this edition is unreliable. 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 at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This budget edition is likely mastered from a 16mm reduction print of The Black Pirate. It is unknown whether the Technicolor or black & white version is presented. The set is filled out with other pirate feature films, television episodes and short films for an approximately 700-minute boxset running time. 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 at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This budget edition is likely mastered from a 16mm reduction print of The Black Pirate. It is unknown whether the Technicolor or black & white version is presented. The set is filled out with 27 other films and television episodes for a 1099-minute boxset running time.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.