The Exile (1931 film)

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Poster for The Exile, "Mighty epic of modern Negro life".

The Exile was a 1931 American film by Oscar Micheaux. A drama/romance of the race film genre, it was Micheaux's first feature-length talkie, and the first African American talkie.^[1] Adaptated from Micheaux's first novel, The Conquest (1913), it has some autobiographical elements: like the film's central character Jean Baptiste (played by Stanley Morrell), Micheaux spent several years as a cattle rancher in an otherwise all-white area of South Dakota.

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story begins in Chicago, where Edith Duval (Eunice Brooks) has become a power in the African American community, largely because she came into possession of a South Chicago mansion where she used to be a servant: the White family that owned the mansion abandoned it as the neighborhood turned Black. She is in love with Baptiste, and at first it seems like they may be a match, but she rejects his idealism and he rejects her cynicism: she wants to turn the mansion into a speakeasy and nightclub.

Baptiste, instead, buys land in South Dakota and becomes a successful rancher. Five years into his time there, he falls in love with young Agnes Stewart (Nora Newsome), and she with him. He considers the situation hopeless, though, because she is white. The audience has already been cued in that he may be wrong about that: when she first heard about him, and it is mentioned to her that he is a "Negro", she conjectures on how light or dark he may be, with words to the effect that "some Negroes are no darker than my mother"—though with no sign of her ever having questioned her late mother's racial identity, or her own. Further, her father has demurred from another rancher's racist remark, quoting Robert Burns, "A Man's A Man for A' That".

Fleeing back to Chicago to escape his supposedly doomed relationship, the previously teetotaling Baptiste returns to Edith's club, her liquor, and her charms. They plan to marry, but a former lover of hers, an Ethiopian named Jango (Carl Mahon) appears on the scene, sneaks into Edith's room and complains of how she has ruined him. He threatens suicide; she, who has nothing but contempt for him, hands him a gun; however, instead of killing himself, he kills her. Baptiste is initially suspected of the murder, but is cleared.

Meanwhile, Agnes's father, discovering that Baptiste has fled, tells her about her own background. Earlier in the film, there has been reference to the one-drop rule: it is clear that in the time's (and Micheaux's) conception of race, this defines her as Black. She takes a train to Chicago, where she and Baptiste are reunited; they marry and return to South Dakota.

The plot gives Micheaux plenty of opportunity to stage nightclub acts, notably singer Celeste Cole, dancer Louise Cook, tap dancer Roland Holder, and Don Heywood and His Band, as well as a bevy of chorus girls.