Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles (1961) covers one night in the lives of young Native Americans living in Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill district. Mackenzie began interviewing a group of Indians in Los Angeles in 1956 and secured their support in producing an independent film that would provide a realistic portrayal of their community’s daily life. The film was completed in 1961 but has rarely been seen until its restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and its subsequent theatrical release by Milestone.
The Exiles follows a group of young Native American men as they essentially forsake their women for a night on the town, meeting up with friends at bars, cavorting with other women, venturing into the hills for drinking, drumming and fighting. They make their way along a circuit of Indian hangouts, small oases in a white man’s city where they can be together and, hopefully, left alone to be themselves. Meanwhile, a lonely wife goes to the movies and finally returns to the home of a friend so that she doesn’t have to sleep alone. In the morning she is able to watch as her husband and his friends finally stumble home drunk through the streets of Bunker Hill.
The rough, gritty, low-budget aesthetic recalls Shadows, John Cassavetes’ first film, set in New York. Both films feel loose and improvised, giving the impression of an authentic depiction of a place and time. And both focus attention on the cities themselves, using the urban landscapes as contexts for the lives of the characters, while also providing a sort of snapshot of a city at a particular point in time.
Milestone is a small company that picks and chooses its material, often sinking much of the company’s resources into a single theatrical and DVD release. The company is responsible for making some rare and important films available to the movie-going public, including I Am Cuba and Killer of Sheep—an impressive streak of significant releases that continues with The Exiles.
72 minutes. $29.95. www.exilesfilm.com. www.milestonefilms.com.
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