I saw this when I was a child and enjoyed it, then ran into it unexpectedly on TV not long ago, and was delighted. I'm not a fan of "Born Free," the more famous Travers-McKenna starrer, with its self-importance, travelogue nature photography, sentimentality ... and that awful Andy Williams vocal at the end. Perhaps this has something to do also with the rather insistent way the move was flogged as "wholesome family fare" at a time of change and - some of us would say - maturity in the commercial film industry. Nevertheless, I wasn't prepared for much on the second viewing of "Ring of Bright Water." I was wrong. Jack Couffer, a veteran of Disney's True Life Adventures, turns out to have been a real filmmaker who knew how to create an ambiance that at times approaches a kind of poetry. The atmosphere seems to proceed out of the characters, not just the settings (from London to western Scotland). The cinematography is lovely (Couffer got his start as a DP). The animals - especially Midj - are not sentimentalized but are endearing and empathetic. The story isn't pumped up with any crude comedy. The (human) performances are nicely low-key. The burgeoning romance between the writer and the doctor is predictable but not oppressively so.
Altogether, Couffer's film has a "naturalness" that almost all other family-nature flicks completely lack. "Ring of Bright Water" has little or nothing to do with the social and political changes happening at the time it was made, nor with current trends in film. It could have been made in almost any year. And it will no doubt continue to provide a strong measure of pleasure for some time to come.
