Elsa Untamed

Born Free is a posthumous triumph for Elsa the lioness, one of the queen beasts of her time and now the subject of a lively movie biography that should leave audiences purring with satisfaction. Heroine of two bestsellers by Joy Adamson, wife of a senior game warden in Kenya, Elsa began her well-documented career as an orphan cub, became a 300-lb. lapful of love and affection, but ultimately returned to her wild, natural way of life. The clincher of this zoological success story is that Elsa, once taught by her human protectors how to stalk and kill, remained their friend until her death in 1961, paying them frequent visits, sometimes with her own trio of snarling cubs in tow.

Made on location in Kenya, Born Free glows with dusty golden beauty, the lion's share of it supplied by the big cats themselves. Two portray Elsa as a young adult, their identities smoothly meshed in the part, while 17 others maul major and minor roles, tearing down clotheslines, chewing seat cushions or carcasses, chasing elephants, or scaring the district commissioner (Geoffrey Keen) into fits of quietly civilized panic. The Adamsons are played by a British husband-and-wife team, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, who perform with a conviction that nearly matches their courage among lions. The result of a year's filming is a wonderfully credible re-creation of man-animal friendship, most joyously free when they romp through the surf with Elsa on a sunny Indian Ocean holiday.

The toilsome chore of untaming their pampered playmate gives the movie tension, much of it spelled out in pictures more than equal to the rich lion lore contained in the book. In one sequence, an embarrassed Elsa is bullied by a small wart hog, and still cannot understand that she will soon have to kill in order to survive. Later, she lies yawning atop the Land Rover, unmoved by a young bachelor lion laying under a tree. Before Elsa mates successfully, reports the surrogate Mrs. Adamson, "we suffered all the agony of parents whose teen-age daughter is out on her first date."

Under Executive Producer Carl Foreman (The Guns of Navarone), Director James Hill and Scenarist Gerald L. C. Copley occasionally tie up a superior cat's tale with tinny sentimentalizing, first in some trumpery about shipping Baby Elsa off to captivity in Rotterdam, again in subtle but fairly insistent reminders that Mrs. Adamson craves an outlet for her maternal instinct. More often, though, the film treats animals with deep respect unspoiled by anthropomorphic cuteness; a baby elephant, a furry, gin-thirsty little hyrax (similar to a guinea pig) and a basketful of scrappy jungle kittens have natural charm enough to soften up the most inflexible zoophobe. Born Free strikingly reaffirms the lesson taught by Elsa--that loyalty, gratitude and affability are traits to be cherished in any species.

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