The Exile

Surprise! I know you didn't expect a movie post this week from me for the "Winter of Fairbanks Jr." which Lisa from Boondock Ramblings does on her blog, but Lisa changed movies, so I'm here after all.

This week's movie is The Exile from 1947. Checking the plot, I was quite sure I had seen it before, but ages ago.
After watching it on YouTube - not in a very good quality unfortunately, but you take what you can get - I knew I had been right although I hadn't remembered everything in detail.

Film poster (fair use via Wikipedia)

The movie is about King Charles II. of England during his exile.
Charles is in exile in Holland waiting patiently for being able to return to his home as King.
When at a market to buy food from what little money he has, he meets Katie who has a tulip farm and runs an inn, but being in debt to her cousin, she's in danger of losing everything.
With "Roundheads" around (a derisive term for supporters of the Parliament after the hairstyle some Puritans wore at the time as opposed to the Royalist Cavaliers), Charles decides to cut his hair short and hide with Katie as a worker both on the farm and in the inn.

Then a man claiming to be the King turns up and stays at the inn.
Another guest is Countess Anabella, a former lover of Charles. She brings him a gift from the French king, a music box which Charles gets pawned the next day to pay off Katie's debt. Katie becomes jealous of Anabella and dismisses Charles before he can give her the good news. When she meets Anabella once more, though, who tells her about it, she eagerly waits for Charles to return. When he turns up again, she falls into his arms and they kiss for the first time.

Meanwhile, Colonel Ingram has come from England to find Charles and kill him, but as he hasn't seen him for years, he doesn't recognize him, but asks him to spy for him instead.
When the false King comes out of his room, Ingram thinks he's the real one and tries to kill him upon which the man admits that he is an actor without work who has pretended to be Charles to swindle his way to a room and food.
Charles tells Ingram to look at him and asks if he doesn't know a Stuart when he sees one.
As more Roundheads arrive, Charles escapes barely by taking the actor's horse when the Roundheads pull him off it, but not before telling Katie he will be back the next day. Much to Katie's surprise, Ingram tells her who Charles really is.
She follows Charles to a windmill for hiding, here they announce their love for one another. Ingram and his men have followed Katie, however, so Charles sends her away and draws attention to himself.
He and Ingram have a sword fight in the windmill and when Ingram's sword breaks, Charles throws his own sword away  and they wrestle during which Charles pushes Ingram to his death.
By now Charles' followers have arrived and he is informed that England wants him to come back without any conditions - God save the king.

Now what will become of Katie's and Charles' love?
His advisor tells him that he belongs to the country, not himself.
Katie and Charles talk, but they know they can't be together. It's a very sad and romantic farewell with a last desperate embrace before King Charles II. steps outside to meet his people.

What do you know about Charles?
When his father, Charles I., was executed in 1649 under Cromwell and the Parlamentarians (I can't help hearing the Monty Python song which has been my cell phone alarm clock tone for a long time), he indeed had to flee the country and spent years in exile.
After Cromwell died, his son Richard took over, but resigned shortly after. Finally a new Parliament asked Charles back to reinstate the monarchy - therefore the term Restoration for this time - after he had made several promises including cooperation with the Parliament.
Again I can't help hearing a song, this time from "Horrible Histories" - "The King of Bling".



Indeed, Charles is also known as "The Merry Monarch", not only because he lifted Puritan restrictions, but because pleasure was an important keyword during his reign, very much including his own which for example shows in the number of his illegitimate children (most of them acknowledged) with his many mistresses, official and unofficial, while he didn't have any children from his marriage.
So yeah, it doesn't sound as if he would have loved Katie forever 😉
I'll leave it to you to look him up if you want to know what else he did and how good a king he was because that would really lead too far here. It's quite the story including the Great Fire of London.

To the movie itself.
It was based on the 1926 novel "His Majesty the King" by Cosmo Hamilton which you can read here if you feel the need. Douglas Fairbanks jr. bought the rights to the novel in 1941. After returning from World War II, he founded his own film studio, The Fairbanks Company.
"The Exile" was announced to be the studio's first movie.

I'm not very demanding in regards to movie quality in image and sound, but I really wish it would have been better because the movie would have been even more fun.
Yes, fun. Don't take it as a history lesson because you will be disappointed, just take it as a fun movie for being "adventuresome, romantic and humorous", just as announced by the "producer-actor". Don't complain about the costumes not being perfect for the period, just look at how good our hero looks in them. He definitely does, you know, and this is the right movie to develop a crush on him if you don't have one already (which is one reason why I wish the quality had been better).
I'd say he did his father proud jumping through windows and on horses, sword fighting, and smiling irresistibly - and the torn shirt after the final fight ... 'nuff said.
The movie feels very much like a homage to Fairbanks sr. which I feel is helped by it not being filmed in color despite Fairbanks jr.'s wishes, and the icing on the cake is that the son used the sword of the father which was given to him by his associate in The Fairbanks Company who had worked with the senior and had owned the sword since 1930.
Oh yeah, and by the way, not just producer-actor, Fairbanks jr. actually co-wrote this movie. As mentioned before, he was an Anglophile, and he isn't the only one who thought Charles II. made for a good story.

Some say the movie is moving at a snail's pace, too much talk, too little action, but I wasn't bored at all.
If you want a slow story about Charles II., try "Royal Escape" by Georgette Heyer. As much as I love my Heyer books, as much I have to agree with one reviewer "He flees and flees and flees ....". I'm digressing, sorry.

So the set (all built on soundstages) looked quite artificial at times, especially the strange trees without any branches around their trunks, the trees with the glued on (?) blossoms or the tulips, but hey, so what? I found that more amusing than annoying and in some scenes it had something dreamlike, especially if there's fog.

So the love story isn't a wild, passionate one, but more on the tender side. I didn't mind that because it was clear from the beginning that there wouldn't be a happy ending for them.
Was Countess Anabella more fun? Well, she would have been, wouldn't she? Katie was a hard working young lady worrying about her debt, Anabella looked much more like one of the ladies Charles could have had a party with, and still he fell for Katie. I actually thought that was rather sweet.

Now I could try to talk about the mood director Max Ophüls (credited as Opuls in his US films) created with his takes, but I think it has been done much better already in some of the sources I added to this post. Why did Maria Montez get top billing? See the sources. Why did the movie have two different endings for the US (a shorter one) and elsewhere? See the sources. Both endings are included on YouTube, by the way.

Time to wrap this up.
If you are in for a bit of adventure and fun with a splash of romance thrown in, go for it and watch The Exile. I put it on my re-watch list myself.
What a pity it's not available on DVD!


Selected sources:

Wikipedia articles on The Exile and Charles II.

The Cairns Post, Sept. 10, 1946, page 6

Showmen's Trade Review, May 10, 1947, page 39

The Exile on IMDb

Meher Tatna: Restored by HFPA - "The Exile" (1947), posted on "Golden Globes", June 28, 2022

The Exile: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Carries on the Legacy of His Father, posted on "Prince of Hollywood", June 5, 2016

The Exile on Letterboxd