THE EXILE (1931) Eunice Brooks, Stanley Morrell & Celeste Cole | Crime, Drama, Romance | B&W

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The Exile is a 1931 American film directed by Oscar Micheaux with choreography by Leonard Harper. A drama-romance of the race film genre, The Exile was Micheaux's first feature-length sound film, and the first African-American sound film. Adapted from Micheaux's first novel The Conquest (1913), it the film shares some autobiographical elements; for example, Micheaux spent several years as a cattle rancher in an otherwise all-white area of South Dakota as does the film's central character Jean Baptiste (played by Stanley Morrell).

SYNOPSIS
A young man named Jean in post-World War I Chicago falls in love with a beautiful girl named Edith. He proposes to her, but realizes that she's involved in the rackets and won't leave them, so he goes back home to South Dakota, where he becomes a successful rancher. There he falls for a white girl, but guilt drives him back to Chicago, where he runs into Edith again, and they agree to marry. When Edith is later found murdered, Jean is blamed for the crime.

In Chicago, Edith Duval has become powerful in the African-American community, mostly because she came into possession of a South Chicago mansion where she was once a servant; the white family that owned the mansion abandoned it when blacks started moving into the neighborhood. She is in love with Jean Baptiste, but she rejects his idealism and he is at odds with her cynicism. Edith wants to convert the mansion into a speakeasy and nightclub.

Baptiste buys land in South Dakota and becomes a successful rancher. Five years into his time there, he falls in love with young Agnes Stewart. He considers the situation hopeless because Agnes is white, but she knows that he is black.

Fleeing back to Chicago to escape the relationship, which he believes is doomed, the former teetotaler Baptiste returns to Edith's club, her liquor and her charms. They plan to marry, but her former lover, an Ethiopian named Jango, appears, sneaks into Edith's room and complains of how she has ruined him. After he threatens suicide, she hands him a gun as a gesture of contempt. Instead of killing himself, he kills her. Baptiste is initially suspected of the murder, but is cleared.

Agnes's father, discovering that Baptiste has fled, tells her about his own background and she realizes that she is partly black. She takes a train to Chicago, where she and Baptiste are reunited; they marry and return to South Dakota.

CAST & CREW
Eunice Brooks as Edith Duval
Stanley Morrell as Jean Baptiste
Celeste Cole as Singer
Nora Newsome as Agnes Stewart
Carl Mahon as Jango
Kathleen Noisette as Madge
Charles R. Moore (actor) as Jack Stewart
George Randol as Bill Prescott
A.B. DeComathiere as An Outlaw
Lou Vernon as District Attorney
Louise Cook as Dancer
Roland Holder as Tap Dancer
Donald Heywood as Bandleader

Directed by Oscar Micheaux
Produced by Oscar Micheaux and Frank Schiffman
Novel and Screenplay by Oscar Micheaux
Cinematography by Lester Lang and Walters Strenge
Music by Donald Heywood
Second Unit Director Leopard Harper
Production Company Micheaux Film
Distributed by Norman Distributing Company, BFI Video, The Criterion Channel
Release date May 16, 1931
Running Time 1 hr 33 min
Language English


NOTES
The film was shot at Metropolitan Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where many early film studios were based at the beginning of the 20th century.[3][4][5] Filming was scheduled to accommodate the many cast members who had commitments on Broadway. Principal photography wrapped in late February 1931[2] and post-production was completed in March. A preview screening was successful and the film premiered at the Lafayette Theater in May to sold-out crowds and positive reviews.

In 2008, film historian Richard Koszarski wrote: "Although some critics later described The Exile 'a disaster,' its technical quality is certainly no worse than Mother’s Boy (1929) and Howdy Broadway (1929), or other low-budget eastern productions of the period. Indeed, Micheaux’s sober analysis of racial distinction with and without the black community marks The Exile as far more ambitious and interesting than most other independent films of the day. The Exile was a highly personal statement that Micheaux dramatized as stock melodrama, a very difficult project to pull off in the 1930s. If the film was the critical and commercial failure some historians suggest, then its fate may be seen as prefiguring the negative response to D. W. Griffith’s The Struggle (1931), shot in the Bronx a few months later."

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