Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1961


The Exiles (1961 film)

Buy The Exiles (1961 film) now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'The Exiles' (1961) is a film by Kent MacKenzie chronicling a day in the life of a group of 20-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in the district of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, California. Bunker Hill was then a blighted residential locality of decayed Victorian mansions, sometimes featured in the writings of Raymond Chandler, John Fante, and Charles Bukowski. The structure of the film is that of a narrative feature, the script pieced together from interviews with the documentary subjects. The film features Yvonne Williams, Homer Nish, and Tommy Reynolds.

Plot



The film is about Native Americans who have left their reservations in the Southwest. It follows them in Bunker Hill, a gritty neighborhood in Los Angeles. The cast of American Indian actors are notable for their lack of self-consciousness as they drink and socialize during a night out on the town ending in a 49 party'Encyclopaedia Britannica' - [http://www.britannica.com/art/forty-nine-dance Forty-nine dance, NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE Written By: John-Carlos Perea] of drumming and dancing on "Hill X" overlooking downtown LA.'The Exiles' DVD - Audio commentary by Sherman Alexie and Sean Axmaker

Production



Filming was started in the late 1950s. The film features rock and roll music provided by Anthony Hilder and Robert Hafner. It was performed by The Revels,'Film Quarterly', Vol. 15, No. 3 Spring, 1962 - [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1210630?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Page 59 Film Reviews, THE EXILES (JSTOR 1210630)] who recorded on Hilder's Impact record label. Years later Norman Knowles of The Revels recalled some of the tracks they recorded for the film. They included "It's Party Time" and possibly "Revellion". According to Knowles, the song "Commanche" which was written for the movie was cut.The Center for Studies in American Culture - [http://csac.buffalo.edu/exiles.pdf September 28, 2010 (XXI:5), Kent MacKenzie, THE EXILES (1961, 72 min) Page 3 to 4]

Release



'The Exiles' premiered at the 1961 Venice Film Festival. As it was only licensed (16mm version) to schools and churches, it did not find a distributor to release it theatrically in that year, and so over the years it fell into obscurity, known to cinephiles but remaining largely unseen by the public. A restored version produced by the UCLA Film and Television Archive premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2008, and Milestone Films released it commercially and on DVD in summer 2008.

Legacy



In 2009, it was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant and will be preserved for all time.

Years later, 'Variety' film critic Dennis Harvey's review of the 2015 film 'Mekko', about a Native American, mentioned 'The Exiles' and 'On the Bowery' (1956); he referred to the two older films as being classics also set on skid row.

Cast



* Yvonne Williams

* Homer Nish

* Tommy Reynolds

* Rico Rodrigues

* Clifford Ray Sam

* Clydean Parker

* Mary Donahue

* Eddie Sunrise as singer on Hill X

* Jacinto Valenzuela

* Ann Amiador as waitress at The Ritz

* Delos Yellow Eagle

* Louis Irwin

* Norman St. Pierre

* Marilyn Lewis as Yvonnes friend

* Bob Lemoyne

* Ernest Marden

* Frankie Red Elk

* Chris Surefoot

* Sedrick Second

* Leonard Postock

* Eugene Pablo

* Matthew Pablo

* Sarah Mazy

* Gloria Muti

* Arthur Madrull as man being shaved

* Ted Guardipee

* Ned Casey

* Jay Robidaux

* I. J. Walker

* Julia Escalanti as Rico's wife

* Danny Escalanti as boy with skypiece

* Della Escalanti

* Tony Fierro

Production crew



* Written, produced, and directed by Kent MacKenzie

* Cinematography by Erik Daarstad, Robert Kaufman, John Morrill

*Production by Ronald Austin, Sam Farnsworth, John Morrill, Erik Daarstad, Robert Kaufman, Beth Pattrick, Sven Walnum, Paula Powers

* Additional photography by Sven Walnum, Nicholas Clapp, Vilis Lapenieks.

* Archive photographs by Edward S. Curtis

* Editing by Kent Mackenzie, Warren Brown, Thomas Conrad, Erik Daastad, Thomas Miller, Beth Patrick

* Music by Anthony Hilder, The Revels, Robert Hafner, Eddie Sunrise

* Sound by Sam Farnsworth

* Sound effects edited by Thomas Conrad

Additional crew



*Marvin Walowitz

*Lawrence Silberman

*Stuart Hanisch

*Mindaugus Bagdon

*Charles Smit

*Judy Bradford

*Ken Nelson

*Ron Honthaner

*David MacDougall

*James Christensen

*Stanley Follis

*Ramon Ponce

See also



* List of American films of 1961

References




Buy The Exiles (1961 film) now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1961



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1106675896.