Tarka the Otter

This episodic adaptation of Henry Williamson's novel seems determined to include stock shots of all British flora and fauna, whether relevant or not. It's a tale of love, tears, adventure, and close shaves, in which the animal stars act well; but only at the end, in the final confrontation between Tarka and his nemesis, Deadlock the otter-hound, does the film really jell. The rest suffers, as does the book, from a mixture of feyness and anthropomorphism, perhaps endearing in the 1920s but emerging as weakness in this more cynical age.