Please don't tell why his hair turned green!
Peter, an orphaned boy, is adopted by Gramp Frye after his parents are killed in Europe while doing war relief work. The boy feels safe with his new caretaker, but when he is taunted for being an orphan, he gets demoralized. The next day Peter wakes up with green hair. Embarrassed and further ridiculed, Peter seeks solace in a nearby forest. To his surprise, he finds other orphans in the woods, who encourage him to spread news of the injustices of war.
Comments
Most powerful due to it being in black and white, the audience cannot see that the boy has green hair, so it literally shows us people getting upset over... nothing at all. If anyone were to try to remake it today, it simply would not work unless they filmed it in black and white again, or came up with some other "disability" to give the title character. A wonderful film about prejudice and tolerance, well before its time, this movie should have been shown everywhere in the 50s, 60s, well, every decade up to the present ever since its creation, really! It should be as well-known as The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind, but instead it's an obscure unknown. I think that's a huge tragedy.