Losey's first feature film was this unexpected Technicolor fantasy with a strong anti-war message. Dean Stockwell is a boy whose parents are busy doing war duty during the London blitz; after they're killed, he's taken in by cheerful Irish former actor Pat O'Brien (who bursts into song at the drop of a hat) in perhaps the least typical scene in the director's entire oeuvre (more suited to an MGM musical, in fact!), he recalls his private performance before a European king! Anyway, things take a curious turn when, in direct opposition to children's suffering in wartime, Stockwell's hair goes from black to green (the color of Spring and, therefore, hope) overnight. However, this defiant gesture isn't easily understood by either the boy's peers (who take to bullying him) or the local elders (who treat him as an outcast); amusingly, milk-man Regis Toomey drops his consignment of bottles off-camera when the physical change which has occurred in Stockwell finally dawns on him! Medical science can't help the boy either, but a 'visit' by other war orphans reassures him of the symbolic role he has to play. Even so, as with virtually every harbinger of an inconvenient truth, he still ends up victimized: his head is completely shaved and, running away, comes across sympathetic children's doctor Robert Ryan(!) to whom the story thus far is recounted in flashback. Given the vital importance of color here, this emerges a very pleasant-looking film indeed; the ensuing drama is remarkably well handled with, thankfully, little concession to sentimentality. Though there's regrettably too little of Ryan to counterbalance O'Brien's malarkey, the whole is undoubtedly boosted by the haunting tune "Nature Boy" (which would somehow find its way effectively into the eclectic MOULIN ROUGE [2001] score!).
Review of The Boy with Green Hair
