A 1950s moment that resonates with our time
Good Night, and Good Luck
dir. George Clooney.
The PG rating for this fine film has added information: ‘Mild themes.’
‘Good night and good luck’ was broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow’s famous sign-off line to his 1950s CBS television news program See It Now. Murrow used that platform to expose the tactics of anti-communist zealot Senator Joseph McCarthy. And to capture that pivotal American moment, director George Clooney has spliced the CBS newsroom drama played out by his faultless ensemble cast with archival footage of the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy, larger than life, plays himself. So does President Dwight D. Eisenhower, sounding to 21st-century ears like a liberal democrat. Some folk attending the test screenings said the guy playing McCarthy was overacting. Too much ‘reality’ TV?
Clooney uses close-focus, lustrous black and white to capture the intensity of the CBS newsroom and corporation under intense political and commercial pressure. The film, all cigarette smoke and eloquent silences, is economical, beautifully shot, and done for a mere $8 million. It is also restrained in ways that underscore but don’t inflate emotion. When Murrow’s friend and news anchor Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise) suicides after being savaged in the Hearst press, Clooney balances Murrow’s taut on-screen eulogy with jazz diva Dianne Reeves’s perfectly enunciated performance of How High the Moon.
The film is also acidly funny. Watch out for Murrow’s reluctant interview with Liberace, in which he makes a deadpan inquiry about the pianist’s marriage plans—and gets trumped.
The script itself is artfully cobbled from the network archives by Clooney and Grant Heslov. ‘Murrow was the best writer,’ says Clooney, and gives actor David Strathairn the lines to prove his point. Here, because it matters, is a more-than-three-second sound bite: ‘We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.’
Strathairn’s splendid performance is evocative without being overwhelming. He brings back Murrow’s powerful, particular voice, and