Born Free

George Adamson is a game warden in Kenya. After an incident three lion cubs are orphaned and his wife Joy takes them in. They raise all three. Two are sent to a zoo. The smallest stays; her name is Elsa. Elsa grows up in the house, lives among people and does not know how to hunt. As she grows it becomes a problem; a lion is not a household animal. The administration wants her sent to a zoo as well. Joy objects and proposes something else: they will teach Elsa to live in the wild. James Hill directs. Virginia McKenna plays Joy and Bill Travers plays George. The source is Joy Adamson's own book. The events are real; the Adamsons lived in Kenya and Elsa's story was read worldwide when the book appeared. The film won Oscars for original score and for song. It was shot in Kenya with real lions; the crew worked with the animals over a long period. The couple who played the leads began working in animal protection after the shoot and founded a trust. The matter it treats is whether taming can be undone; the film handles it as a technical problem. The narrative brought the argument about conservation into mainstream cinema at an early date. Its limit is viewpoint; the local people stay in the background and the colonial order is not questioned. Who it is for: viewers who like nature films and classic family production. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, the viewpoint belongs to its period, and the narrative plain.