The Black Pirate

Douglas Fairbanks' most beautiful film — shot in the early two-color Technicolor process that gives every frame the lush, painterly quality of a Howard Pyle illustration come to life. A nobleman, sole survivor of a pirate attack, infiltrates the buccaneers by pretending to be one of them, rising through their ranks while secretly plotting their destruction. Fairbanks, characteristically, performed his own stunts — including a famous sequence where he rides a sail down a ship's mast using a knife as a brake — and his physical grace against the jewel-toned Technicolor backgrounds creates some of the most gorgeous imagery in all of silent cinema. The film was the first feature to use the color process throughout, and its success proved that color wasn't just a novelty but a genuine artistic tool. Pure swashbuckling rapture.