This Touching ’60s Drama Depicts an Emotional Real-Life Story That Features a James Bond Regular and Maintains an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes

From Lassie to Beethoven, movie animals have been incredibly popular throughout the years, providing audiences with the anthropomorphized thoughts and feelings they often ascribe to their own pets. Yet you’ve never seen a movie animal quite like Elsa, a lioness who becomes a surrogate child to a human couple in Born Free. Released in 1966, the film tells a remarkable true story about the bond that forms between animals and humans in an almost documentary fashion, blending fictional and vérité filmmaking styles to create the sense that you’re watching reality unfold in front of you. It’s National Geographic meets Homeward Bound, predicting the slate of popular nature documentaries that would bring wildlife into our living rooms.

‘Born Free’ Proves That Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers in Born Free (1966) — Image via Columbia Pictures

Adapted from Joy Adamson‘s nonfiction book of the same title, Born Free centers on Joy and George Adamson (Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers), British nature conservationists living in Kenya. As the film opens, George must kill a man-eating lion that’s been attacking villagers, and he’s forced to also kill a lioness who’s later found to be protecting her cubs. George and Joy then adopt the three baby lions, raising them as they prepare to send them to the Rotterdam Zoo. Yet Joy doesn’t want to part with one of the cubs, Elsa, having grown close to her. George and Joy decide to keep Elsa, domesticating her to the point that she’s almost a household pet. Yet their boss, John Kendall (Geoffrey Keen), warns them that they’ll soon have to send Elsa to the zoo due to complaints by the locals. Wanting to keep her free, Joy tries to train Elsa to survive in the wild, which proves difficult since she’s learned to rely upon her human protectors for food and shelter.

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In bringing this true story to the screen, director James Hill adopts a documentary style in many ways, beginning with the casting of real-life couple McKenna and Travers. In a further instance of art imitating life, McKenna and Travers became animal rights activists after shooting the film and helped found the Born Free Foundation, which, according to their website, “work(s) tirelessly to stop the exploitation and suffering of wild animals, whether living in captivity or in the wild.” Working with real wildlife, Hill takes an observational approach to the scenes involving Elsa, seemingly content to sit back and watch reality unfold, rather than manufacturing it. This in turn lends an added realism to the scenes involving actors, even ones like Keen, who audiences would later recognize from his role as British Defense Minister Sir Frederick Gray in several James Bond films (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, and For Your Eyes Only, among others). Rather than play up the melodrama, the actors play into Hill’s naturalistic approach, further blurring the line between fact and fiction.

‘Born Free’ Predicted Cinematic Nature Documentaries

Although it features a James Bond regular, the real standout of Born Free is another Bond luminary, composer John Barry (who created the famous 007 theme). Barry won Oscars for composing both the film’s original score and its title song, and the music functions almost like a character in and of itself. The instantly recognizable theme lends a majesty to the African landscape, presented in dazzling Cinemascope vistas. But it also brings an emotion to the story that can be difficult to otherwise attain, given that the lead character is an animal who cannot talk. Barry’s music provides Elsa with the various thoughts and feelings Joy and George graft onto her, without ever edging into easy sentimentality. The ending has a devastating impact because we feel as though we’ve come to know Elsa, which is astounding considering we can only infer things about her.

With its beautiful cinematography and swelling score, Born Free paved the way for nature documentaries from the likes of David Attenborough, who made the natural world feel just as exciting and cinematic as a Marvel movie. Rather than watch from a distance, these documentaries feel immediate, visceral, and charged, which is what it feels like to be in the jungle with wild animals. It’s hard to imagine Planet Earth without Born Free paving the way with its emotional story about the inner lives of animals and the majestic land that they roam.