Director: Max Ophüls
An exile from his native Germany after the Reichstag fire of 1933, Max Ophüls lived in France throughout the thirties before moving to the United States in 1941. He was fired from his first directing gig in Hollywood due to his slow pace – the Howard Hughes produced Vendetta, which was eventually released in 1950 with Mel Ferrer as the credited director – however in 1947 Ophüls would be hired by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. to direct a historical swashbuckler that he had written and intended to produce. While an action picture seems out of character for Ophüls when one considers the elegiac grandiosity of his more typical romances, he brings to the picture his penchant for long tracking shots, following characters up and down stairs and from room to room, defining spaces and enriching them with detail. Additionally, though in its latter half The Exile is little more than a canvas on which Fairbanks can show off his gymnastics, it is the ill-fated romance that is at the heart of the picture. The Hollywood ending was bitter enough – Fairbanks chooses to retain the crown rather than going off with the lowly inn keep and flower girl, played by a delightful Rita Corday (billed as Paule Croset) – but the European ending even further amplified the girl’s feelings of abandonment, as the camera literally pans away from her to glimpse the plaque that celebrates the rightful king’s newly restored legacy.
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