The Black Pirate (1926) on Netflix
Pirates sink a ship, leaving a father and his son alive. The father dies; the son joins the crew as the Black Pirate to avenge him. He captures a vessel single-handed.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.0/102,426 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Pirates board and loot a ship, set it on fire, and the gunpowder in the hold blows the vessel apart. Two people survive and come ashore on an island, a father and his son. The father is dying; he hands the young man his signet ring and is buried by him, and the son swears vengeance on the pirates. He presents himself to the band as the Black Pirate and asks to join them, taking on their best swordsman to prove himself. When the Pirate Lieutenant says there is more to piracy than swordplay, the Black Pirate promises to take the next prize single-handed. Among the passengers on the ship he captures is a young woman of royal blood.
Cast
- John Wallaceas Peg-Leg Pirate
- Fred Beckeras Pirate
- Nino Cochiseas Pirate (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Black Pirate (1926)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Douglas Fairbanks spent a whole year running laboratory experiments to find the color combination most restful for the eye, choosing a chromatic palette no one had thought of, according to his son.
- Before committing to color, Fairbanks had two ophthalmology professors, Ray Irvine and M. F. Weymann, compare eye fatigue from a Technicolor film and a black-and-white one; the color film proved no more tiring, and seemed less so.
- Fairbanks secured four of the seven Technicolor cameras then in existence, so each shot could be filmed with two cameras side by side and two more stood ready as replacements.
- Director Albert Parker found a way to keep the film from looking like a cheap postcard after visiting an exhibition of old master paintings, Rembrandt in particular, at the Huntington Library in Pasadena.
- For the heroine of The Black Pirate, Fairbanks first wanted an unknown actress, but after seeing Billie Dove in Wanderer of the Wasteland, he gave her the role.
- Because exterior light proved impossible to control, 95% of the exteriors and all of Carl Oscar Borg's sets were built at the Pickford-Fairbanks studio, including a 60 by 60 meter pool holding over two and a half million liters of water, with aircraft propellers making one-meter waves.
- Fairbanks had a team of 380 people build four ships, including three galleons 30 to 65 meters long and a 100-oared galley, hiring European craftsmen, especially Norwegian, for details like hemp swellings.
- The famous stunt where Fairbanks slides down a sail, held only by his knife, was shot on a separate set with a tilted, propeller-inflated sail and angled cameras; the pre-cut sail hid a rope-held, counterweighted knife, and Fairbanks wore a harness and duct tape devised by his brother Robert.
