The Boy With Green Hair (Joseph Losey, 1948)

Pat O'Brien and Dean Stockwell in The Boy With Green Hair 

Cast: Dean Stockwell, Pat O'Brien, Robert Ryan, Barbara Rush, Richard Lyon, Walter Catlett, Samuel S. Hinds, Regis Toomey, Charles Meredith, David Clarke, Billy Sheffield, Johnny Calkins, Teddy Infuhr, Dwayne Hickman, Eilene Janssen, Curtis Loys Jackson Jr., Charles Arnt. Screenplay: Ben Barzman, Alfred Lewis Levitt, based on a story by Betsy Beaton. Cinematography: George Barnes. Art direction: Ralph Berger, Albert S. D'Agostino. Film editing: Frank Doyle. Music: Leigh Harline.

Joseph Losey's The Boy With Green Hair has endured, mutating with the times to reflect whatever social issue dominates at the moment. When it was made in the postwar 1940s, it was intended to carry a strong antiwar statement -- one that RKO's new owner, Howard Hughes, hated so much that he tried to re-edit the film to eliminate it. Today, it might be seen as echoing some of the passion behind Black Lives Matter. In any case, it's a film close to the liberal heart, produced by the premier Hollywood liberal, Dore Schary. Fortunately, it makes its point without preachiness and, mercifully, without overindulging in whimsy. (An exception to the latter is the boy's fantasy about his grandfather's encounter with a king.) Dean Stockwell, 12 years old at the time but looking a couple of years younger, gives a refreshingly natural performance as the boy, Peter, free from the cutesiness that often weighed down performances by children in that era.