THE BLACK PIRATE was one of the first feature-length films to be shot entirely in the all-new two-colour Technicolor process. The story about a motley band of pirates provides the star Douglas Fairbanks an ideal opportunity to shine with his heroic deeds and feats. It wasn’t until the New York Museum of Modern Art’s new digital restoration that the film, which at the time was extremely expensive to produce, regained its original warm colour tones. A colourful – in the truest sense of the word – conclusion to this year’s anniversary edition of the Bonn Summer Cinema!
Douglas Fairbank’s glorious chromatic production, THE BLACK PIRATE, was presented last night at the Selwyn Theatre before a gathering that included a host of celebrities from various walks of life. The audience was ushered into the realm of piracy by the singing of “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest” and afterward by a ghost-like voice that asked every one to go back to the days of blood-thirsty sea robbers. With its excellent titles and wondrous colored scenes this picture seems to have a Barrieque motif that has been aged in Stevensonian wood.
In it there are many clever ideas that will assuredly appeal to every reader of “Treasure Island,” or the man who as a youngster felt his heart throb on listening to the accounts of the terrifying Blackbeard and brutal Morgan, those English marauders of the Spanish Main. There is the buried treasure, the blowing up of vessels, the romance involving a beautiful girl, the nonchalant use of cutlasses and knives, the dramatic episode of the handsome hero walking the plank and the subsequent capture of the greedy robbers.
Mr. Fairbanks realized that color must be subordinated to the action of the episodes, and therefore, although the telling prismatic effects occasionally reap their full reward, they are put forth with deliberation and restraint. In this photoplay, which was made by the Technicolor process, there is no sudden fringing or sparking of colors, the outlines being always clearly defined without a single instance of the dreaded trembling “rainbow” impinging itself on the picture. For the most part modulated shades are employed, such as sepia, the dominating tone which is farmore effective than a lavish scattering of reds and greens. In fact, decisive red is only depicted to show the blood on the hands of a man or on his sword.
Mordaunt Hall, in: The New York Times, March 9, 1926
