moonspinner55 Review of The Boy with Green Hair

The Boy with Green Hair (1948)

Anti-war rhetoric mixed curiously with childhood whimsy...

[6/10 · 5 March 2008]

A belligerent young boy in small town America during WWII, living with his Irish grandpa and slowly making friends at his new school, discovers that his do-gooder parents stationed in England were killed; upon learning the color green is a symbol for hope and "new things to come", the lad's thick, curly hair turns the shade of emerald overnight--but instead of bringing hope to the world, he becomes the town pariah. Childhood fantasy and folksy whimsy turned (not very persuasively) into wartime allegory, with unsubtle messages and a heavy sort of stylized direction from Joseph Losey, perhaps out of his element. Losey does handle the actors well, especially Pat O'Brien as pre-teen Dean Stockwell's sing-songy grandparent, and the rich Technicolor production and music score are both lovely. Still, the gist of this little tale (framed in flashback for no apparent reason other than to give Robert Ryan an elongated cameo as a doctor) is obvious at best, poky at worst. Main theme "Nature Boy" has had a much longer life than the movie itself, but O'Brien is marvelous, and the look of the picture encapsulates an era with enormous, appealing grace. **1/2 from ****