Le garçon aux cheveux verts

I saw the Boy With Green Hair a long time ago and it stayed with me. It was hard to imagine all that fuss even back in the 1960'3 over one poor kid who's hair just happened to turn green. But, like others have mentioned consider the times and the era. World war Two had just ended and the Cold War had just begun. I can still remember people picking on"long hairs" in the early sixties because they let their hair grow a bit. This is a very memorable, stay with you classic about tolerance of different people, especially those with no choices in the matter. It is worth watching and renting and possibly buying. Too many movie critics on these pages and with older movies try to applies today norms and political correctness to decades old movies when the norm was different then. The movie is an excellently acted parable. I am surprised it hasn't been released on vhs or dvd or just plain shown more often on some of the cable movie channels. Unlike today, no kid back, especially a boy would have dyed their hair green. It may be a movie from a different era but the message is still the same regardless of the times. It may be dated a little, but it is still a classic.

As the film begins, young Dean Stockwell (as Peter Fry) is in a police station; obviously, the adults do not know where he belongs, or why his head is shaved bald. Robert Ryan (as Dr. Evans) gets young Stockwell to speak, after giving the hungry boy a hamburger. Stockwell tells his story: he was a war orphan, and was shuffled between relatives ("I sure lived in a lot of places"). Finally, he winds up with Pat O'Brien (as "Gramps"), a vaudeville-type actor. He and Mr. O'Brian form a relatively happy family. However, at school, Stockwell is teased, for being an orphan; specifically, he is told he resembles an "Unidentified War Orphan" depicted in a poster. That evening, O'Brien comforts Stockwell, and promises the next day will bring hope in the form of a surprise.

The surprise is, of course, that Stockwell becomes "The Boy with Green Hair". This is a very unusual film, particularly for the time period; it is both thought-provoking, and entertaining. Stockwell and O'Brien are wonderful. "Nature Boy" is a beautiful, and apt, theme song. Stockwell's meeting with the War Poster children is very well done - still, quiet, and effective. However, the themes of "peace" and "tolerance" could be better connected. And, there are some minor story difficulties; for example, the milkman couldn't possibly be responsible for the green hair, unless Stockwell is the only milk drinker in town (stipulating the townspeople, as a whole, are of average intelligence). Still, a lovely film about being different, which we all are.

******* The Boy with Green Hair (11/16/48) Joseph Losey ~ Dean Stockwell, Pat O'Brien, Robert Ryan

In a police station, a child psychologist uses his ability to interview a runaway boy with hairs completely cut-off that is reluctant to speak. The boy tells that his name is Peter Fry (Dean Stockwell) and his parents had traveled to London and have not returned yet; meanwhile he is living with Gramp Fry (Pat O'Brien), after being lodged in the houses of many relatives for short periods. He gets along with Gramp, the locals, his schoolmates and his teacher; however, when he discovers that he is an orphan of war, his hair turns green on the next morning and Peter is rejected by his community.

The metaphoric "The Boy with Green Hair" is one of the most beautiful and touching fantasies, with magnificent messages against war, racism and intolerance. Joseph Losey directed a fantastic film, absolutely underrated in IMDb, with an original story associated to an awesome screenplay and top-notch performances, highlighting a twelve year-old Dean Stockwell and Pat O'Brien. In times of intolerance, this movie is a gem to be discovered by worldwide viewers. Further, this is the type of movie that should be recommended in schools for children, not only because of the antiwar and anti-racism peaceful messages, but also because demands interpretation of the story told by Peter to the psychologist. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "O Menino dos Cabelos Verdes" ("The Boy with Green Hair")

This film really touched me as a child. Firstly, it was the only serious film about a kid, with a kid as the star, that I had ever seen. None of this Disney stuff. Though later came the '5,000 Fingers of Dr.T', another great film for youngsters. Secondly, it was about a child's pain and inner life. There are a few platitudes thrown around by the wooden adults but the film seems to aim at exposing this kind of no-communication. It just isolates and abandons a youngster when they most need a strong and comforting adult connection.

Every time I see this film again it is just as good as the first time. Another interesting aspect of this film's story is that although the boy has lost both of his parents during WWII, he has become stuck and needs to move on and incorporate this difficult time. And in doing so he becomes aware of the many WWII orphans everywhere and becomes able to identify himself with the many children who are in his own circumstances or worse. He doesn't feel so alone. He finds that he truly cares about the suffering of other orphans and wants to do something to alleviate this suffering.

There! And I didn't give away the 'green hair' thing. I have a collection of anti-war films- Glory-Three Kings-Courage Under Fire-Coming Home. I only need "The Best Years of our Lives' and the 'Boy with Green Hair' to make it complete.

'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.