The Exiles (1961)

There are films that matter primarily as documents, and there are films that matter as cinema. The Exiles, released in 1961 after several years of production, sits in a contested space between those two things, and where exactly it lands depends very much on what you ask of it. Directed by Kent MacKenzie, a University of Southern California film school graduate, the picture follows a group of young Native American men and women through a single night in the Bunker Hill neighbourhood of Los Angeles, a district that would itself be demolished and redeveloped within a few years of the film's completion. That double erasure, of the people and of the place, gives the footage a peculiar weight in hindsight. MacKenzie shot on location with a non-professional cast, working in a mode that sits somewhere between ethnographic record and fiction film, with participants essentially playing versions of themselves. The production was a genuinely independent effort, made through MacKenzie's own company on a shoestring over an extended period, and it received only limited distribution at the time before being largely forgotten for decades. A restoration and theatrical re-release in the 2000s, championed by Charles Burnett among others, brought it renewed attention and a reputation as a neglected classic of American independent cinema.

The five principal performers, Yvonne Williams, Homer Nish, Tom Reynolds, Rico Rodriguez, and Clifford Ray Sam, are all drawn from the community the film depicts, which lends the material an obvious authenticity. None had conventional acting backgrounds, and MacKenzie's approach leaned into that, combining observational footage with scripted or semi-improvised scenes and interior voiceover passages that give each character a private register the camera alone could not access. The technique places The Exiles in loose conversation with the Italian neorealist tradition and with contemporaneous American works that were pushing documentary and fiction toward each other. It is a film that sits alongside other adventurous work from the decade: if you have read our coverage of Persona or Winter Light, you will have a sense of the broader 1960s appetite for stripping cinema back to something more exposed and less comfortable. Whether that ambition always translates into a satisfying viewing experience is, of course, a separate question, and one that critics have answered very differently over the years.

The film runs a brisk 72 minutes, which ought to help with pacing, and its subject matter, the marginalisation of urban Indigenous Americans in a city that offered relocation without roots, remains both historically specific and painfully relevant. The Bunker Hill setting, with its Victorian rooming houses and steep Angels Flight funicular, gives the film an incidental period texture that no production designer could have manufactured. Whether MacKenzie translates that texture into something that functions as drama, rather than simply as record, is the central question any honest review of The Exiles has to face. It is a question the film's reputation has sometimes papered over with reverence. With that in mind, here is what I made of it.

The Exiles (1961) is often described as a raw, neorealist portrait of urban Native American life in 1950s Los Angeles, and while its intentions may be earnest, the execution falls painfully flat. Directed by Kent Mackenzie, the film blends documentary-style observation with fictionalized scenes following a group of young Indigenous people displaced from their reservations and adrift in the city. On paper, it’s a vital perspective; in practice, it’s a dull, meandering slog with little narrative drive, emotional depth, or cinematic urgency. Shot in stark black-and-white, the film captures bars, streets, and cramped apartments with gritty authenticity, but that realism doesn’t translate into engagement. Scenes stretch on without purpose: characters drink, argue half-heartedly, or stare into space, offering glimpses of alienation but never building toward insight or catharsis. There’s no central story, just a loose cycle of boredom and despair that repeats without evolution. Even the soundtrack (jazz and rock ‘n’ roll meant to evoke youthful rebellion) feels disconnected from the action, more like background noise than emotional texture. With minimal context, no character development, and voiceover narration that feels detached rather than empathetic, it reduces its subjects to symbols of marginalization rather than full human beings. You’re left watching lives unfold through a window, never invited inside. The Exiles may hold archival or sociological interest, but as a film? It’s poorly structured, emotionally inert, and dramatically inert. Its historical significance doesn’t compensate for its failure to connect, move, or even hold attention. A well-meaning but ultimately ineffective experiment that confuses realism with resonance.

I will say that the restoration work done on the film is genuinely impressive, and it is worth seeing in the best available presentation if you are curious. But good preservation cannot substitute for good filmmaking, and for me the sociological interest and the cinematic experience remain stubbornly separate things here, never quite fusing into the single, unified impression a film needs to leave you with. There are other dramas from this era, and from other corners of world cinema, that manage to honour marginalised lives without reducing their subjects in the process: our pieces on Yi Yi and Mustang touch on films that pull off that balance rather better. The Exiles clearly came from a place of genuine concern, and I would never dismiss the importance of what it is trying to do. But good intentions, even well-documented ones, do not make a film worth sitting through twice.

Rating: ★  | Year: 1961  | Watched: 2026-04-20

View on Letterboxd →

Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for The Exiles (1961) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Rent: BFI Player
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Criterion Channel · Kino Film Collection
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from the 1960s: Viy (1967) · Persona (1966) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · Daisies (1966)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)