The 1950s saw a few American variations on Italian neorealism, prototypes for independent filmmaking that mingled the looks, tools, and feel of fiction and documentary. Kent Mackenzie’s film “The Exiles,” which begins its first official theatrical run on Friday — 47 years after its completion — joins the spectrum plotted by Lionel Rogosin’s “On the Bowery” (1957), Morris Engel’s “Little Fugitive” (1953), and John Cassavetes’s “Shadows” (1959). But instead of focusing on different strata of New York City, Mackenzie draws a mostly nocturnal, sympathetic portrait of disaffected American Indians in Los Angeles.

“The Exiles,” which opens today at IFC Center, is haunted by the urge to drift away in the moment, even as a deep past keeps welling up in the heart. Filming in Bunker Hill in the late 1950s, Mackenzie interwove the disparate paths of a young couple on Friday night: Likable, enervated, jobless Homer (Homer Nish) goes off with friends, dropping his pregnant wife Yvonne (Yvonne Williams) off at the double feature. Through voice-over, we often hear their thoughts and opinions, and there’s one remarkable flashback to Homer’s memory of his Arizona home.

Homer hits a bar on a nearby strip, pushed along by his friend Tommy (Tom Reynolds). When Homer absconds to a card game in a half-empty house, we join Tommy and others for a while as they carouse on a car ride. Yvonne goes window-shopping, musing on her child’s possible future, then stays at a friend’s apartment. Everyone threatens to shrink into the shadows; at times, the street lamps are like orbs, the neon signs gleaming in the high-contrast black-and-white photography (shot by Erik Daarstad, Robert Kaufman, and John Morrill).

The Bunker Hill locations are a big part of “The Exiles,” as well as a major reason for its rediscovery. Relics of the “real” Los Angeles, such as the funicular railway known as Angels Flight, as well as run-down bars, hardware stores, and watering holes, markets, the wood-frame houses of the working class — which would be celebrated decades later in Thom Andersen’s eye-opening 2003 essay-documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself” — feature prominently. The city ultimately demolished and redeveloped the area. (The London-born Mackenzie, who died in 1980, also made a documentary short about the neighborhood before “The Exiles” as his thesis film at the University of Southern California.)

Adding to the unvarnished feel of the film are the nonprofessional actors: The cast members improvise their lines, and their voice-overs feel drawn from specific, regional experience. Homer is so bored he drops a beer bottle and starts a shoving match at the bar, and in fact some of the actors were in and out of jail during filming. Mackenzie lets us feel the suspension of the characters’ lives, but it’s not a wallow, just another long night (though not too long, at only 72 minutes).

The dialogue in “The Exiles” is looped in, giving the speech a chatty, floating quality that can be distracting at first. But actually, Mackenzie’s rich and detailed sound design is one of the finest things about the movie. Pop hits from the period — by the Revels, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others — flow freely within scenes from jukeboxes, the sonic match to Homer and Tommy’s greased-back hair. Bar chatter, cop radio calls, television dialogue (” … no-good Injun!”) fill the night; a train bell announces the dawn.

Homer’s broadest smile arrives at a gathering on “Hill X,” a regular American Indian hangout that overlooked the city. (The site was eventually leveled to make way for Dodger Stadium.) Cars honk their way up, and the circles of friends play drums and hang out into the wee hours. In one of several lovely transitions in the film, Mackenzie cross-fades from Yvonne inviting her friend to feel her baby to a close-up of one of the drums.

“The Exiles” is being released by Milestone Films, which brought Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” to theaters last year. The two films bear similar concerns and moods, not to mention a focus on a migrated community. But it would be unfair to expect Mackenzie’s film to match the critical (and box-office) success of Mr. Burnett’s film. On its own terms, “The Exiles” brings back lives and sights that might otherwise continue to disappear into the past.

At IFC Center (323 Sixth Ave. at West 3rd Street, 212-924-7771).