The Boy with Green Hair (1948)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Boy with Green Hair (1948) – J. Losey

Strange, sombre, almost morose “fantasy” film starring 12-year-old Dean Stockwell as an orphan who wakes up one morning to find that his hair has turned green.  Immediately, the people of the town (and, of course, the other kids) begin to distance themselves from him, so you get the feeling that this is a film about how terrible we are to those who are different.  But, no, instead the boy is told in a dream that the green hair is meant to attract people’s attention so that then he can deliver them a fervent anti-war message.  Director Joseph Losey was a friend and colleague of Bertolt Brecht – but his famed alienation techniques don’t really seem to be on display here; instead the leftist message would end up getting Losey ensnared by the HUAC hearings a few years later (but he escaped to build a distinguished career abroad including a strong partnership with Harold Pinter).  Aiding the downbeat tone is the choice of jazz standard “nature boy”, full of minor chords, as a riff to fill the soundtrack.  Even Pat O’Brien’s Irish ballads can’t cut the gloom and the actor seems at sea, especially because his role (as foster grandfather) calls for him to betray the poor poor boy with the green hair.  An oddity.