Fairbanks: Tha Black Pirate

[Will Fiddle]

Last Friday I showed my class "The Black Pirate" with Douglass Fairbanks Sr. They absolutely loved the last quarter of the film with all the bondage boys in their short pants and leather straps monkey piling on the pirates and all the rest of the absurd climax of the film.

It was an incredible contrast to the polish evident in most everything in Flynn's "Captain Blood" made only ten years later.

I have read that Fairbanks wanted the action to be tongue and cheek, but WOW! Is anyone familiar with the history of the film's production?

Why is that ship so absurd? Did the production designer give the carpenters very vague descriptions of what a Spanish Ship should look like?

Why is the signet ring Egyptian? Did they have nothing else in the props closet?

Why are all of the soldiers dressed like bondage boys? Did they run out of cloth for costumes?

Why do they row up in what appears to be a Viking long boat? Did they spend all their maritime budget on the wierd ship and have to make do with materials from other films?

Seriously, if anyone knows the background on this film, my class and I loved it, and we want to know more about it. Two guys are buying a copy just to watch with friends.

[JoshuaRed]

I LOVE watching the Black Pirate...for all the goofy reasons you mention, but also because Fairbanks manages to capture some nice Howard Pyle-esque imagery here. The fact that it was shot in color was remarkable for it's time. If you have the same DVD edition I do, it has a nice commentary track by some noted film historian. He has LOTS of interesting behind the scenes info and humorous stories about Fairbanks and the production. Best part is, since the film is silent you can easily follow the story AND the commentary!

[Sebastien Auguste Benoit]

You can download a copy of the film here:

Internet Archive: The Black Pirate

[Mission]

I was watching this, mainly looking for pirates with eyepatches and I noticed that it had several of the cherished pirate movie conventions; bucket boots, parrots on shoulders, fancy frock coats, the Pyle image 'Marooned', a peg legged pirate, waist-scarves and large buckle belts, buried treasure, a compass, a pirate with no arm (but no hook on it either), a ship's wheel, earrings, a barrel-topped chest, setting fire to the powder magazine and walking the plank.

But no eye patches. From this I suspect that eye patches were a later addition to the pirate myths. (Also no hooks and no pirates climbing with knives in their teeth.)

[Brit.Privateer]

Why is that ship so absurd? Did the production designer give the carpenters very vague descriptions of what a Spanish Ship should look like?

Why are all of the soldiers dressed like bondage boys? Did they run out of cloth for costumes?

Why do they row up in what appears to be a Viking long boat? Did they spend all their maritime budget on the wierd ship and have to make do with materials from other films?

For the ship, I suspect that it was out of a desire for a good set to do action. Fairbanks was well known for his gymnastics he did on the screen - hopping, jumping, and climbing amazing distances. The tall stern castle allowed for a lot of that (especially climbing) and also allowed for that last scene where his men lift him through hatches all the way up to the top deck. In addition, the large ship allowed for large areas to fight and to fit the large crews. In fact - since I've yet to see any other film available that is older than Black Pirate - this film might be the so called "trope setter" for all the other films in the future for the use of big ships. Big ships = big areas for combat.

For the soldiers, the only explanation I can come up with is that Fairbanks' character planned out the whole last action after he returned to land. He planned to make the boat look like it was sinking and all his men drowned, but in reality were swimming to the pirate ship. So maybe it was supposed to be part of the plot that the soldiers were specially dressed for the mission. In practical movie terms, those outfits are probably cheaper than other costuming they could have provided, and are more functional for the physical actions they are engaged in (the climbing and fighting and so on).

For the boat, it wasn't a viking boat really (wrong construction for one), and it had a cannon on the front. It was designed to carry a lot of men and purpose designed to sink. Also note that it had a cannon the front. One has to remember that in the 20s and 30s that there weren't a lot of people who would yell "inaccurate!" like today. That was the case for a lot of films set in foreign lands outside of the U.S. or Europe. As long as the sets and props looked good and fulfilled what the director wants, then they built it. Just like the late 19th and early 20th century painters either borrowed things from other times/places or just outright invented things to create the image of pirates that we have today - movie people could do the same thing. At the most, a movie might try to create what an audience imagines a particular place or time looked like.

I'm glad to see people still finding this film and enjoying it. Hopefully you were using one of the DVD editions of it released by Kino. Kino digitally restored the film, made sure the film was at the right speed (ever notice how some silent films seem to be slightly fast - that's because the transition from silent to sound resulted in changes in film speed, and sometimes the silent films got played on sound film speeds), and had the correct musical score to go with it. I have it in blu ray, and the higher quality helps even more (believe it or not). Be careful of other editions, for it's been put into plenty of $5 or lower DVD racks and in pirate film compilations in it's low quality form (no color, wrong music, wrong speeds) because its public domain.

As suggested above, if you want to learn more about the film, obtain one of the Kino editions that has the film historian Rudy Behlmer commentary on it.