Directed by Albert Packer. Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove, Sam De Grasse, Donald Crisp, Anders Randolf, Tempe Pigott, E. J. Ratcliffe.
Vigorous silent swashbuckler with Fairbanks as a nobleman who becomes a pirate in order to exact revenge on the scalawags that sunk his ship and killed his father. Humdrum direction, and the romance with a hostage "princess" (Dove) is a bit feeble, but the production is brimming with graceful and acrobatic stunts, derring-do and sword fights, plank-walking and booty-hoarding (even drawing lots for a prize monkey), plus the famous scene of Fairbanks "sliding" down sails while singlehandedly seizing a ship! Fine, frivolous fun, with a scale rarely matched by its descendants. One of the earliest movies to be filmed in two-strip Technicolor, though some prints are in tinted black & white.
73/100
Vigorous silent swashbuckler with Fairbanks as a nobleman who becomes a pirate in order to exact revenge on the scalawags that sunk his ship and killed his father. Humdrum direction, and the romance with a hostage "princess" (Dove) is a bit feeble, but the production is brimming with graceful and acrobatic stunts, derring-do and sword fights, plank-walking and booty-hoarding (even drawing lots for a prize monkey), plus the famous scene of Fairbanks "sliding" down sails while singlehandedly seizing a ship! Fine, frivolous fun, with a scale rarely matched by its descendants. One of the earliest movies to be filmed in two-strip Technicolor, though some prints are in tinted black & white.
73/100