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MovieMail's Review
MovieMail exclusive - Joseph Losey's idealistic fantasy parable sees Dean Stockwell's mini-peacenik's mop go green. David Parkinson dyes his hair in honour of a powerful film.
On hearing that the world is preparing for another conflict, war orphan Peter’s hair changes colour overnight – to the consternation of the inhabitants of the small town where he lives, who want to shave off this all-too visible sign of protest.
Joseph Losey made his feature debut with this anti-war allegory that has long divided opinion.
New RKO chief Howard Hughes hated it so much that he tried to force 12 year-old Dean Stockwell to change the film’s message by inserting a line about America needing military might to back its moral superiority. But Stockwell refused, despite the fact that he deeply resented Losey informing him that his pet kitten had died to make him cry during a key scene.
However fanciful the film’s symbolism it remains potent, and the scene of the visitation of the orphaned ‘poster children’ when Peter is in a lonely woods is every bit as affecting as the returning dead in Gance’s J’Accuse (1919).
The film’s charm and sincerity are unquestioned, and lend unexpected power to its ideas on tolerance and pacifism.
Joseph Losey's idealistic fantasy parable sees Dean Stockwell play a 12 year-old war orphan passed around from various relations.
During the course of a school project collecting money for war orphans he wakes up one day and finds his hair has turned green, whereupon spirits of some of the dead orphans visit him and tell him he has been marked this way so he can show the world that war is a bad thing for everyone, but most especially for children.
The film also introduced the song 'Nature Boy', that launched Nat King Cole's career as a solo recording artist.
