'The Boy with Green Hair (1948)' feels very much like a British film. I'm not quite sure why, but it's probably not because of Pat O'Brien's would-be Irish accent. The manner in which director Joseph Losey blends vivid working-class realism with elements of fantasy reminded me of Carol Reed's 'A Kid for Two Farthings (1955).' Both films feature a boy protagonist using fantasy to find solace amid the harsh realities of life – in Peter Fry's case, to come to terms with the death of both parents during the London Blitz. Young Dean Stockwell, who the previous year had played Nick Charles Jr. in 'Song of the Thin Man (1947),' gives a surprisingly mature and sensitive performance as the youth whose hair inexplicably turns green one morning. Displaying unique range for an actor of his age (and upstaging his adult co-stars), Stockwell oscillates between fresh-faced enthusiasm, timidity, resolution, and, in the film's framing sequences, a hardened resentment towards society.
Losey released his film in the relative calm between the end of World War Two and the slowly escalating Cold War, when the United States was still coming to terms with its losses. Far from simply being a fluffy, imaginative children's film, 'The Boy with Green Hair' has more ambitious aspirations, an anti-war film only years after Hollywood collectively urged audiences to stand up and fight. Given that the director was later blacklisted for alleged Communist affiliations, one finds it tempting to regard his film as political allegory of sorts. Stockwell's Peter Fry is an ordinary boy, liked and respected by his friends and acquaintances throughout town. Then he is physically branded with an arbitrary label, one that doesn't change the sort of person he was or is, but that is nevertheless viewed by society as unnatural and potentially dangerous. He is ostracised, harassed, and abandoned by his friends, ultimately forced to flee their persecution. Peter Fry was labeled with green hair; Losey, and hundreds like him, was labelled a Communist.
Every time I watch a film with Pat O'Brien he's forced to play it straight, so it was good to see him having some fun as Gramps, a faded Irish vaudeville performer who takes Stockwell's war orphan into his home and proudly adopts him as a grandson. Behind the hammy accent there's something distinctly wistful about O'Brien's performance, the ghost of a tired old man clinging to his long-gone youth, unable to properly nurture the next generation because he never grew up himself. Robert Ryan also appears as a child psychologist who interviews Peter, but he's not given anything much to do aside from listening to the boy's story, his characteristic intensity temporarily subdued. The film is shot in sumptuous Technicolor that almost looks too vibrant to be real, pushing the border between reality and imagination. Overall, 'The Boy with Green Hair' is both an intriguing children fantasy and a powerful anti-war fable, tinged with that childhood innocence that makes every ideal seem so attainable.
