The Exiles

1961, Kent MacKenzie, 72 minutes

The Exiles chronicles a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in the district of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles. At the time, Bunker Hill was a blighted residential area of decayed Victorian mansions that was 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 Exiles is a beautifully photographed slice of down-and-almost-out life, a near-heavenly vision of a near-hell.