Kent Mackenzie’s 1961 film, The Exiles, provides a filmic record of the Los Angeles Bunker Hill district captured in the writings of Raymond Chandler, Charles Bukowski and John Fante. Attention is drawn to the plight of the Native Americans who departed the desolation of reservation existence only to land within the harsh reality of city life.

The Exiles is a look at the Los Angeles missing from other films of its era, the flipside of the glamour and glitz that the deceptive city seemed to promise the youth who flooded here seeking a crack at a better life. What they got instead was a strange limbo land of alienation, becoming exiles on the land their forefathers fought for.

Grade: A

The Exiles releases in select theaters Aug. 15.