The Boy with Green Hair

December 20, 2020. 

Sometimes it is therapeutic to feel guilty. It was 1948 or '49. A mother of five takes her five-year-old on a streetcar to a downtown theater for a rarest time almost to herself. In sympathy to others on the theater's main floor, she escapes with her naughty son to a sparsely populated balcony. There he continues to be bored . (He argues, for example, that they are watching a new screen in a different theater.) Poor lady. How could I have been so narcissistic even at that age to ignore her needs for a nice afternoon outing? I know that early in the video era I rediscovered the film and watched it, though I remember little. I found it to be strangely intellectual for kid and adult--an anti-war (or is it pro-war?) movie a few years after wwII--based on a deep short story of 1946. Tonight I'm going to try to twist an arm in my bubble and watch it again. I expect to marvel that such a movie came out in 1948 while confronting memory of another of my imperfections.

It took me 72 years to know it. But, after watching '
The Boy with Green Hair' again tonight, I must say it is a gem of a movie and I must brag again of my good fortune in the woman who took her naughty boy along on her day to see it.

 

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins