The first feature film made in Idaho was shot more than a century ago. A new version of it has premiered, in part due to the efforts of a determined professor and a team of archivists, historians and artists.
“Told in the Hills” is a Western romance that was filmed in Kamiah, Idaho, on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation.
“It was made in 1919, and it was an unusual film, even for early cinematic standards, because of the unique and unprecedented collaboration with the Nez Perce Tribe,” said Colin Mannex, executive director of the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre.
The silent film’s story follows Jack Stuart, played by Robert Warwick. Stuart is from a wealthy family and tries to escape some family drama by heading West. But he gets himself into trouble.
More than a hundred members of the Nez Perce Tribe were invited to participate in the filming.
“ They presented a lot of authentic cultural regalia as a part of the production,” Mannex said.
The Nez Perce tribal members portray the Kootenai tribe in the film, because the story takes place in rural Montana, despite being filmed in Idaho.
After a young Kootenai chieftain is accidentally killed when he tries to bring a message of goodwill to the U.S. cavalry, Stuart is unjustly imprisoned, and the story follows how he escapes.
“The lodges, the horses and even a lot of the ceremonies that are represented are authentic Nez Perce ceremonies that our people carried from the time of the buffalo days to the time of the reservation period,” said Nakia Williamson-Cloud, director of cultural resources for the Nez Perce Tribe.
The goal of the movie wasn’t to document Native American dances and ceremonies, but it did.
In fact, the Code of Indian Offenses was a federal law passed in 1883 that forbade the kinds of traditional Indigenous religious practices captured in the film.
Depicting the actual ceremonies — even if they were in a fictional film, Williamson-Cloud said, ended up preserving those traditions.
“That just shows the resiliency of our people, and the ability to kind of try to find those openings in those times where they could express who they really are,” he said.
The film went missing over the decades. But at an event last year, Mannex got a tip about a Boise State University professor named Tom Trusky who, in the 1980s, had been researching early films made in Idaho.
“He was able to identify this partial print that existed in the Soviet archive,” Mannex said.
Films like “Told in the Hills” were printed on actual film back then. They were mailed in big tins around the world for showings in different theaters, and they would get played over and over again.
“They experienced some wear and tear,” said Gwyn Hervochon, an archivist, associate professor and librarian with Boise State University.
The Soviet Union was one of the last stops for films that crossed the sea and circulated through Europe and beyond, she said.
Some of those films ended up staying in the Soviet Union and getting locked away, said Hervochon.
Trusky wrote to the Russians asking about the film. To sweeten the deal, he enclosed the famed 1952 portrait of Marilyn Monroe wearing an Idaho potato sack.
The Russians wrote back, telling him they had two reels of the “Told in the Hills” film that survived over the years.
The 35 millimeter film print was sent back to BSU in 1987, Hervochon said.
This past spring, Mannex went down to Boise and was able to find most of it in the university archives with some help from Hervochon.
“Gwyn helped me identify everything that I needed, including the original shooting script,” Mannex said.
Mannex had the film digitized to 4K footage, including around five minutes of footage from the reels that weren’t part of the original finished film. Then Mannex looped in his friend Tom Frank, a producer living in Los Angeles, to edit the project.
Because only a third of the film was found, Frank had to work on how to build a narrative from the partially reconstructed video and photograph stills.
“The way that it relies on the inner titles and the music to do so much more of the lifting than what we're used to by today's standards of storytelling had a lot of fun challenges,” Frank said.
Using the original script for guidance, Frank said he is combining newer footage and using a special filter to match the black and white images.
Like many silent films, there's music throughout the whole picture. The score for the new version of the silent film was created by Diné composer Connor Chee.
Because Frank is still working on the film, Chee said it was a challenge to create a soundtrack.
“ What I ended up doing was writing about 17 different pieces, 17 cues that had a variety of emotions that could match what I'd seen on the screen in this rough cut,” Chee said.
Being a member of the Navajo Nation, Chee says he doesn’t have to explicitly try to give his work an Indigenous feel because it's always woven into his work. But he said he did approach the music with a historical lens.
“I wanted the melodrama to match sort of the time period in that sense, of what you're seeing on screen,” Chee said.
The new version of the restored film premiered at the Kenworthy Theatre in downtown Moscow as part of last week’s Silent Film Festival.
Mother and daughter Jennifer and Lisa Wilcox came to the screening.
“It was really great, neat little piece of history,” said Jennifer.
Moscow resident Bob Woods said he grew up in Kamiah, near the canyon where some of the scenes took place.
“Lawyer’s Canyon, I know it right off the bat,” he said. “I thought it was great, I just loved it. I knew this might be the only chance I ever have to see this, so I had to come.”
Having the movie restored and preserved is a way for the tribe to revisit their ancestors, said Williamson-Cloud.
“Some of those songs that were sung at that time, our community still holds today,” he said.
Because the project is still a work in progress, he said there is a chance some traditional music from the tribe could be infused into future showings.
Since only two of the original six reels of “Told in the Hills” were recovered, the action scenes and many of the ceremonies featuring the tribe are still missing, Williamson-Cloud said.
“I think the big hope would be that the rest of the film might come into discovery and perhaps that could be edited back in,” he said.
Archivists say chances are slim. But he’s hopeful the other reels are out there somewhere.
UPDATE: This story has been updated with information and interviews from the film's premiere.
