Today, history records Edward R. Murrow as a towering journalist and Senator McCarthy as a sniveling tyrant. Don't you love it when history gets it right.
Supporting Strathairn are George Clooney as his producer, Fred Friendly, a role for which the actor put on some considerable extra weight; Frank Langella as William Paley, the head of the CBS television network, who was reluctant at first to go with the McCarthy story but in time threw his support behind it; Ray Wise as Don Hollenbeck, a CBS newsman accused of Communist sympathies, who was eventually driven to suicide; Jeff Daniels as Sig Mickelson, head of the CBS news department; Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson as Joe and Shirley Wershba, husband-and-wife employees of the CBS news department at a time when it was against the network's rules for married couples to work together; and Dianne Reeves as a jazz singer, whose vocal interludes reinforce the mood of the film. McCarthy himself is portrayed through actual archival news footage, a brilliant idea that is well integrated into the film and lends the narrative an added note of realism.
Clooney does a first-rate job handling the movie's themes, mainly, that a free country must never compromise the civil liberties of its citizens for the professed sake of protecting them. The days of McCarthyism were dark times for individual freedoms in America. For instance, almost every major corporation in the country required its employees to sign a loyalty oath, swearing that they were not nor ever had been members of the Communist Party. CBS required even Murrow to sign the document. If you didn't sign, you'd lose your job.
The movie's focus is absolute. It concentrates almost wholly upon the three television programs devoted to Murrow's encounter with Senator McCarthy. In fact, it's almost jarring to see a couple of incidental matters intruding into the story, like the husband-and-wife tangent and the Hollenbeck suicide, no matter how significant they may be to the movie's message. The concentration on the Murrow-McCarthy confrontation is that intense.
The set decoration, cinematography, costumes, and props recreate the time and place of the story in minutest detail. In this regard, the movie plays almost like a history lesson. Clooney accurately depicts the atmosphere of the newsroom, with its hectic, last-minute decisions and its abundance of backstage bickering, joking, and teasing. He gives us archival footage not only of McCarthy but of other figures of the period and a few actual ads of the day for Alcoa Aluminum and Kent cigarettes that lend verisimilitude to the proceedings. And, needless to say, he provides Strathairn with the exact on-air words of Murrow himself.
"The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one," says Murrow, "and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly."
Because of the controversy surrounding some of his stories, Edward R. Murrow found his place in television news slowly diminishing after his public debate with McCarthy. He may have been a pioneer of investigative journalism, but it came at a price. He died of lung cancer two days after his fifty-eighth birthday in 1965. After his censure by the U.S. Senate, Joseph McCarthy was largely ignored by the press and the public. He died in 1957.
But "Good Night, and Good Luck" is not about the lives of either of these men; it is about the principals they stood for. And, sometimes, the good guys win.
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." --Edward R. Murrow
Video:
For the sake of authenticity and to help recreate the look of mid-1950s' television, Clooney chose to photograph the picture in black-and-white. Now, wait, don't go away. It's gorgeous photography, and for his work cinematographer Robert Elswit justly received an Oscar nomination. Indeed, the picture is one of the best-looking pieces of cinematography imaginable and one of the best B&W transfers since "The Man Who Wasn't There." It's that good.
The Warner Bros. engineers transferred the image to disc at a relatively high bit rate in an anamorphic widescreen that nicely accommodates a 16x9 television. The contrasts are excellent, with deep black levels, vibrant whites, and every shade in between well represented. There's also a touch of grain to make the B&W look even more realistic and help blend in the restored archive footage with the newly shot scenes. Remember, there's a reason why serious still photographers continue to shoot in black-and-white, so one should not let any possible biases against the B&W medium confound one's common sense.
Audio:
The audio is rendered via Dolby Digital 5.1, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be monaural. The sound does come from the front three speakers, but most of it appears to be emanating from the center stage alone, and almost nothing, not even the jazz interludes, comes from the surrounds. This is not a complaint, mind you, as this is the way television would have sounded in the mid 1950s; it's just an observation. Beyond that, the audio is exceptionally smooth, quiet, and easy to take.
Extras:
There are three major extras on the disc: an audio commentary, a fullscreen featurette, and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The audio commentary is with the movie's director/screenwriter/co-star George Clooney and the movie's producer/screenwriter Grant Heslov. Clooney does most of the talking on the commentary, and he is both enlightening and charming. He and Heslov combine their remarks about the reasons they made the film with historical information and inside facts on the filmmaking. Plus, Clooney is an amusing and self-effacing fellow who makes one want to listen. The "Good Night, and Good Luck" featurette lasts about fifteen minutes and takes us behind the scenes, supported by some of the people who fact-checked the film, including several of those who were around at the time of the actual events depicted.
The extras conclude with twenty-two scene selections, but no chapter insert; English as the only spoken language; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
Parting Thoughts:
If a demagogue is a political leader who gains power by appealing to people's prejudices and emotions, then Senator Joseph McCarthy fairly defines the word. Today, history records Edward R. Murrow as a towering journalist and Senator McCarthy as a sniveling tyrant. Don't you love it when history gets it right.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated "Good Night, and Good Luck" for six Academy Awards: Best Picture (producer, Grant Heslov); Best Director (George Clooney); Best Actor (David Strathairn); Best Art Direction (James D. Bissell and Jan Pascale); Best Cinematography (Robert Elswit); and Best Writing Directly for the Screen (George Clooney and Grant Heslov).
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." --Edward R. Murrow
Clooney does a first-rate job handling the movie's themes, mainly, that a free country must never compromise the civil liberties of its citizens for the professed sake of protecting them. The days of McCarthyism were dark times for individual freedoms in America. For instance, almost every major corporation in the country required its employees to sign a loyalty oath, swearing that they were not nor ever had been members of the Communist Party. CBS required even Murrow to sign the document. If you didn't sign, you'd lose your job.
The movie's focus is absolute. It concentrates almost wholly upon the three television programs devoted to Murrow's encounter with Senator McCarthy. In fact, it's almost jarring to see a couple of incidental matters intruding into the story, like the husband-and-wife tangent and the Hollenbeck suicide, no matter how significant they may be to the movie's message. The concentration on the Murrow-McCarthy confrontation is that intense.
The set decoration, cinematography, costumes, and props recreate the time and place of the story in minutest detail. In this regard, the movie plays almost like a history lesson. Clooney accurately depicts the atmosphere of the newsroom, with its hectic, last-minute decisions and its abundance of backstage bickering, joking, and teasing. He gives us archival footage not only of McCarthy but of other figures of the period and a few actual ads of the day for Alcoa Aluminum and Kent cigarettes that lend verisimilitude to the proceedings. And, needless to say, he provides Strathairn with the exact on-air words of Murrow himself.
"The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one," says Murrow, "and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly."
Because of the controversy surrounding some of his stories, Edward R. Murrow found his place in television news slowly diminishing after his public debate with McCarthy. He may have been a pioneer of investigative journalism, but it came at a price. He died of lung cancer two days after his fifty-eighth birthday in 1965. After his censure by the U.S. Senate, Joseph McCarthy was largely ignored by the press and the public. He died in 1957.
But "Good Night, and Good Luck" is not about the lives of either of these men; it is about the principals they stood for. And, sometimes, the good guys win.
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." --Edward R. Murrow
Video:
For the sake of authenticity and to help recreate the look of mid-1950s' television, Clooney chose to photograph the picture in black-and-white. Now, wait, don't go away. It's gorgeous photography, and for his work cinematographer Robert Elswit justly received an Oscar nomination. Indeed, the picture is one of the best-looking pieces of cinematography imaginable and one of the best B&W transfers since "The Man Who Wasn't There." It's that good.
The Warner Bros. engineers transferred the image to disc at a relatively high bit rate in an anamorphic widescreen that nicely accommodates a 16x9 television. The contrasts are excellent, with deep black levels, vibrant whites, and every shade in between well represented. There's also a touch of grain to make the B&W look even more realistic and help blend in the restored archive footage with the newly shot scenes. Remember, there's a reason why serious still photographers continue to shoot in black-and-white, so one should not let any possible biases against the B&W medium confound one's common sense.
Audio:
The audio is rendered via Dolby Digital 5.1, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be monaural. The sound does come from the front three speakers, but most of it appears to be emanating from the center stage alone, and almost nothing, not even the jazz interludes, comes from the surrounds. This is not a complaint, mind you, as this is the way television would have sounded in the mid 1950s; it's just an observation. Beyond that, the audio is exceptionally smooth, quiet, and easy to take.
Extras:
There are three major extras on the disc: an audio commentary, a fullscreen featurette, and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The audio commentary is with the movie's director/screenwriter/co-star George Clooney and the movie's producer/screenwriter Grant Heslov. Clooney does most of the talking on the commentary, and he is both enlightening and charming. He and Heslov combine their remarks about the reasons they made the film with historical information and inside facts on the filmmaking. Plus, Clooney is an amusing and self-effacing fellow who makes one want to listen. The "Good Night, and Good Luck" featurette lasts about fifteen minutes and takes us behind the scenes, supported by some of the people who fact-checked the film, including several of those who were around at the time of the actual events depicted.
The extras conclude with twenty-two scene selections, but no chapter insert; English as the only spoken language; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
Parting Thoughts:
If a demagogue is a political leader who gains power by appealing to people's prejudices and emotions, then Senator Joseph McCarthy fairly defines the word. Today, history records Edward R. Murrow as a towering journalist and Senator McCarthy as a sniveling tyrant. Don't you love it when history gets it right.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated "Good Night, and Good Luck" for six Academy Awards: Best Picture (producer, Grant Heslov); Best Director (George Clooney); Best Actor (David Strathairn); Best Art Direction (James D. Bissell and Jan Pascale); Best Cinematography (Robert Elswit); and Best Writing Directly for the Screen (George Clooney and Grant Heslov).
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." --Edward R. Murrow
Average user rating (1-5):
[release]17945[/release]