Movie Review

Good Night and Good Luck

A Movie Review by Susan Frome

"Good Night, and Good Luck", is about the world-renown CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow, (David Strathairn) broadcasting in the early days of television in the 1940s and 50s. The movie, directed by George Clooney (who also stars), marvelously captures that period during the misery and mayhem of the McCarthy hearings, one of the earliest television broadcasts of live history. Photographed in black and white by Robert Elswit, it all seems even more believable due to the fact that television was transmitted only in black and white in those days.

It is also about Mr. Murrow's strong journalistic values which in our modern world have mostly been lost and seem to need reviving through another medium, the motion picture. It is so rare to see a movie which wants to remind us of earlier honorable beliefs. In effect, film itself thus becomes an honorable medium.

The choice of how to tell this story fits hand-in-glove with the subject. The subject is Mr. Murrow's broadcasts pitted against Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, how they came about and their outcome; all presented as a television tale. The black and white photography, the setting of the CBS studio, the offices, the hallways we practically never leave the building, and the incredible close-ups, which really show us the Talking Heads of television's only style of camera work. The latter is still true even today for news shows.

Fittingly, the film is written (by Mr. Clooney and Grant Heslov) and directed in this unusual cinematic way. It's like watching a television show about a television show. It works brilliantly. With the quick and elegant editing by Stephen Mirrione, we are held in this television world of inner entanglements and outside battles. Mr. Murrow is either writing a report in his office, holding staff meetings, or appearing on the screen in the studio. It is all tightly shot with swirls of cigarette smoke everywhere - the cigarettes almost become a character in themselves.

Mr. Strathairn has been around for a long time in good movies and those not so good, but he is always memorable in his focused style. Here he is very focused, intense, and determined to play the nobility and integrity of Mr. Murrow. The slick hair and the constant cigarette are just props because we can feel the actor digging deep to bring forth this wonderful character.

As is probably well known, Mr. Murrow, who had broadcast from London during the Blitz in World War II, came back home to tangle with another villain, Senator McCarthy who was on a search-and-destroy mission after Communists in the United States. People were called forward to defend themselves during the famous hearings and many ended up in prison. A number of those accused were in the entertainment business and lost their jobs and even their lives since they were blacklisted from getting any work at all. The paranoia that swept the country was evil and contagious.

This was the issue Mr. Murrow attacked on the television screen and which the senator was invited to respond to on the next show, which, of course, he did. McCarthy did not fare so well, attempting to sidestep the issues. Mr. Murrow subsequently became a hero through the all-pervasive medium of television.

He had other problems with the CBS "brass" played frightfully well by Frank Langella as William Paley, the head of the studio. Mr. Langella has become a big, hefty actor. When he and slim, tallish Mr. Strathairn meet eye to eye across Paley's desk, you know who?s in charge, but you also know who has the ethical stance to win against McCarthy. In the end, though, corporate Paley holds the whip.

There have been several movies in the past dealing with news broadcasting or the print media such as: "All the President's Men," "Broadcast News," "The Paper," "Absence of Malice." In all of them, the camera moves excitingly around the newsroom or through the studio, taking us on a Ferris-wheel ride through the space where the news is happening at the moment and being written up or broadcast at any second.

We get to know the characters, running hither and thither, sliding down hallways to get the news out there on time. Then, of course, we go home with them to their latest love-story problem or family issues or babies being born ("The Paper" with Michael Keaton). We sit back and watch the story unfold and possibly learn how true events happened ("All the President's Men" with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman going after President Nixon).

But there is now a whole new way of telling these stories and Mr. Clooney and his crew have done it. They have created a new style, a new way of looking at the screen.
Mr. Strathairn will probably be nominated for Best Actor this year and Mr. Clooney for Best Director. They may not win, but we will know what a fine job they did.
Good Night, and Good Luck.

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