George: I don't know what goes on in that head of yours anymore... What's wrong with a zoo, anyway?
Joy: Nothing. Except that she won't be free.
— Joy and George discuss the movie's main conflict
Born Free is a 1966 British family adventure film based on Joy Adamson's non-fiction book of the same name, directed by James Hill and starring Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers.
George (Travers) and Joy Adamson (McKenna), a British couple who have long lived in Kenya for George's work as the senior game warden of the region, find their lives changed forever when, after one of George's jobs takes an unexpected twist, they become surrogate parents to a trio of orphaned lion cubs. Joy quickly finds herself becoming particularly attached to the runt of the litter, whom she names Elsa. As the cubs grow older, the Adamsons make the painful decision to send them to a zoo in Rotterdam, but George decides at the last minute to keep Elsa for Joy.
Elsa and the Adamsons return home and settle into their new normal, and for a few months, all is well; Elsa runs errands with Joy, accompanies the couple when George's work requires him to travel, and helps to keep watch over George when he becomes ill. But trouble looms on the horizon as Elsa grows into a full adult lioness, as the divide between her wild nature and her domesticated upbringing begins to create trouble. When one of Elsa's "games" leads to an elephant stampede, it becomes clear that the Adamsons will no longer be able to keep Elsa indefinitely. George's boss, John Kendall (Geoffrey Keen), advises them to send Elsa to a zoo, but Joy can't bear the idea of Elsa living out her days in a cage, especially given how she's become accustomed to a much different way of life. Instead, Joy proposes a radical plan that will become the Adamsons' most difficult challenge yet: she wants to teach Elsa to live as a wild lion so that she can be set free.
This film contains examples of:
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Most of the significant deviations from the true story are of this type.
- In real life, the Adamsons always intended to keep Elsa and send only the two other cubs to the zoonote . In the film, they're planning to send away all three, requiring Joy to say a heartbreaking goodbye to Elsa, and it's only at the last minute that George decides they can keep Elsa after all.
- In the film, after Elsa causes an elephant stampede, the Adamsons can no longer keep her, and the only choices are to concede to sending her to a zoo or to set her free, and they're also under a time constraint because of a pending long leave. In real life, there were no time constraints or ultimatums; Joy simply decided that it was better for Elsa to be free than to live her entire life domesticated.
- All Animals Are Domesticated: Deconstructed. Elsa really is domesticated because of how she was raised, but she still has wild instincts even if she doesn't really understand them, and, perhaps just as importantly, is still perceived as a wild animal and a predator by other animals and many people; this eventually results in a situation where it becomes clear that the Adamsons will no longer be able to keep her. There are also hints to this effect earlier, such as the fact that the cubs end up having to be banned from the house because they're so rambunctious that they end up being destructive. Averted completely at the end of the film with Elsa's cubs, as Joy makes a conscious decision to keep her distance from the cubs because they're wild and she doesn't want to compromise that in any way. Also averted with various other wild animals that show up in the course of the story who are clearly not domesticated, such as the elephants who destroy a nearby village after Elsa inadvertently triggers a stampede.
- Babies Ever After: In the final scene, Elsa has cubs of her own.
- Based on a True Story: There really was a Joy Adamson who really did raise a lioness named Elsa to adulthood and then set her free; the film is based on her memoir, also entitled Born Free, which chronicles these events. The film noticeably ups the drama and the stakes a few times, but it does keep most of the major points intact.
- Benevolent Boss: Kendall helps the Adamsons secure some of the accommodations they need in their plan to set Elsa free, even though he personally thinks it's a bad idea.
- Bittersweet Ending: It's more sweet than bitter, as Joy succeeds in her mission to set Elsa free and is ultimately able to reunite with her, but it still means that Elsa will no longer occupy quite the same space in the Adamsons' lives as she did when she was their pet.
- Character Narrator: In addition to being the main character, Joy also narrates the story in voiceover, presumably as a nod to the real Joy Adamson having recorded the story as a memoir.
- Dramatic Irony: In the Cold Open, the viewer knows that a lion is lurking nearby as the women are doing their washing, but the women have no idea he's there until it's too late.
- Epic Fail:
- On the first night of the Adamsons' sojourn to Kiunga, the goat-stealing lion they had come there to take care of wanders into their camp, and George goes out to shoot him, only to realize (after he pulls the trigger and nothing happens) that he forgot to load his gun. He does successfully make the kill a few hours later.
- Early on in her survival training, Elsa successfully chases down a warthog, but, apparently thinking this is akin to the games she played with toys, doesn't do anything with it once she catches it. Ergo, not only does the warthog get away, but it ends up getting a few good hits in on Elsa first in retaliation.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When George sees Elsa sucking on Joy's thumb, he realizes that maybe the reason the cubs aren't taking the bottles is not because they're put off by the formula, but because they don't understand the bottle (Joy's thumb is more similar to the source they're used to feeding from than the cold rubber nipples), and comes up with the idea of dripping some of the formula on Joy's hand for them to lick off. Once they realize what's in the bottles, they eagerly take to them.
- Foregone Conclusion: Obviously, Elsa isn't actually going to be sent to a zoo less than a third of the way through the film, or else the story would have ended right there.
- Funny Background Event: In the first scene after the trip to the airport, John drops by to check up on George, who has been ill, while Joy is out with Elsa. When they get back, as Joy is greeting George, John, who is clearly nervous about being around Elsa to say the least, can be seen very deliberately locking the gate behind her so Elsa can't come in.
- Gilligan Cut: Joy explains to the viewer that they had reduced Elsa's meals in order to encourage her to kill for food. Cut to Elsa stealing a roast off the Adamsons' table, and Nuru chastising her (while Nuru's compatriot, Makedde, chuckles with amusement).
- Got Me Doing It: In the scene where Joy goes to Nairobi overnight, George makes a quip to John about Joy talking to Elsa like she actually expects Elsa to understand what she's saying, only to catch himself doing the same thing shortly thereafter when he finds Elsa sitting by the road waiting for Joy to come back.George: (to Elsa) Damn it, now you've got me talking to you.
- Gory Discretion Shot: In the opening scene, the camera shows the moments leading up to the man-eating lion's attack, but cuts away a split-second before it actually makes contact with the victim. It's not totally Bloodless Carnage, as the subsequent shot shows a plume of blood in the river as her laundry floats away (in order to make it clear what's happened), but the viewer is spared from seeing anything particularly grisly.note
- Meaningful Echo: At one point while they're trying to train her, Elsa spots a warthog and pursues it, but has no real idea what she's supposed to do with it once she catches it and ends up confusedly playing with it, only for it to begin bullying her. Toward the end, the same scenario plays out, but this time Elsa makes the kill, showing that she's finally getting it.
- Monster Is a Mommy: Too late, the game wardens realize that the man-eating lion's mate was only charging them to keep them away from her cubs.
- No Social Skills: One of Elsa's challenges in reintegrating into the wild is that she never learned the social rules of a wild pride. Of course, lions have no concept of Culture Clash, so the other lions just think Elsa is badly behaved.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Joy's reaction when Nuru tells her that Elsa is "playing" with the elephants.
- Earlier in the film, Joy and George react this way when they realize, a moment too late, that they forgot to shut the gates they use to keep the lion cubs out of the house.
- Out of Focus: Even when all three lion cubs are around, Elsa gets far more attention in the narrative than her sisters. Most notably, the two older cubs' names are mentioned only once; after that, Elsa is the only one ever singled out from the group or mentioned by name.
- Pet Baby Wild Animal: Elsa and her sisters, Lustica and Big One.
- Raised in Captivity: Deconstructed. The Adamsons do manage to train Elsa to live in the wild, but it isn't automatic or easy; rather, it's a long, difficult, and sometimes even scary process.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter:
- The lion cubs, especially when they first arrive at the Adamsons' home.
- Also Pati, the Adamsons' pet rock hyrax.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: John Kendall repeatedly insists he has no problems whatsoever with Elsa. No one really believes him.
- Time Skip: The end of the film skips from Elsa's "final test" to the Adamsons' return to Kenya after their long leave. Justified since there are likely to be few if any plot-relevant moments in between.
- The film also skims over a period of several months after the elder two cubs are sent to the zoo by way of a Photo Montage; it's unclear exactly how much time passes, but it's enough for Elsa to grow up significantly, as she goes from being small enough that a strong man can carry her to being clearly very close to fully grown when the story resumes. There's another, shorter skip after the trip to Kiunga, as Joy's narration indicates that the next sequence of events takes place "a little while later".
- Title Drop: Joy drops the film's title in the closing narration."We saw her many times again, born free and living free. But to us she was always the same: our friend, Elsa."
- She also says it during an argument with George about Elsa's future, saying that Elsa "was born free, she had the right to live free".
- We Named the Monkey "Jack": Elsa is named for an old schoolmate of Joy's. In this case, it's clearly meant as a compliment, as Joy speaks highly of the human Elsa while explaining why she chose to give the lion cub her name.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The baby elephant Elsa shepherds home when they find her after the stampede is seen in one brief scene (in which Nuru is feeding it) and then disappears with no explanation as to how that happened or where it went.
