David Strathairn's portrayal of the celebrated newsman...is so dead-on accurate as to be uncanny.
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"Black-and-white?" you may well ask. Why in the world would Warner Bros. release a black-and-white movie in high definition? The simple answers are that (1) Warner Bros. have been in the habit of issuing all their most-recent movies in HD; and (2) "Good Night, and Good Luck" boasts some of the most beautiful cinematography of any kind in any film made in the past few years. Yes, it's in black-and-white, and, yes, it's excellent. Moreover, as fine as the high-bit-rate, anamorphic transfer is in standard definition, the high-definition transfer is slightly better, as a comparison between the two sides of this HD-DVD and DVD Combo disc illustrates. But first a word about the film.
Among the multitude of movies made in the last few years about real-life people--films covering singing stars, sports legends, writers, politicians, and academics--2005's "Good Night, and Good Luck," about newscaster Edward R. Murrow, ranks high on the list. David Strathairn's portrayal of the celebrated newsman, like Philip Seymour Hoffman's depiction of the celebrated author Truman Capote the same year, is so dead-on accurate as to be uncanny. Add the political angle to "Good Night, and Good Luck," a message that still resonates today after half a century, and you get a superb motion-picture experience.
"We can compete, and successfully, not only in the area of bombs, but in the area of ideas."
--Edward R. Murrow
Two opening asides: Before going any further I'd like to explain that the title of this movie is actually "Good Night, and Good Luck." with a period after it. That's because the title was a tag line with which Murrow would customarily close his programs. As a sentence, it is naturally followed by a period, but for purposes of this review I'm going to leave the period out as being a bit awkward. Also, I believe a viewer should have as much grounding as possible in the real-life subject matter of this film in order to appreciate how well the filmmakers have recreated it; therefore, I have included more background information than I usually would.
To begin, then, some history of the movie's two key participants, courtesy of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Here, we read that Edward R. Murrow was a "radio and television broadcaster who was the most influential and esteemed figure in American broadcast journalism during its formative years." After the Second World War "Murrow became CBS vice president in charge of news, education, and discussion programs. He returned to radio broadcasting in 1947 with a weeknight newscast. With Fred W. Friendly he produced 'Hear It Now,' an authoritative hour-long weekly news digest, and moved on to television with a comparable series, 'See It Now.' Murrow was a notable force for the free and uncensored dissemination of information during the American anticommunist hysteria of the early 1950s. In 1954 he produced a notable exposé of the dubious tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had gained prominence with flamboyant charges of communist infiltration of U.S. government agencies."
Further, the Encyclopedia reminds us that Joseph R. McCarthy was a "U.S. senator who dominated the early 1950s by his sensational but unproved charges of Communist subversion in high government circles. In a rare move, he was officially censured for unbecoming conduct by his Senate colleagues (Dec. 2, 1954), thus ending the era of McCarthyism.
McCarthy was a quiet and undistinguished senator until February 1950, when his public charge that 205 Communists had infiltrated the State Department created a furor and catapulted him into headlines across the country. Upon subsequently testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he proved unable to produce the name of a single 'card-carrying Communist' in any government department. Nevertheless, he gained increasing popular support for his campaign of accusations...to his supporters, he appeared as a dedicated patriot and guardian of genuine Americanism; to his detractors, as an irresponsible, self-seeking witch-hunter who was undermining the nation's traditions of civil liberties. The persecution of innocent persons on the charge of being Communists and the forced conformity that this practice engendered in American public life came to be known as McCarthyism. McCarthy's increasingly irresponsible attacks came to include President Dwight D. Eisenhower and other Republican and Democratic leaders. His influence waned in 1954 as a result of the sensational, nationally televised, 36-day hearing on his charges of subversion by U.S. Army officers and civilian officials."
"Good Night, and Good Luck" focuses solely on Murrow's unmasking of Senator McCarthy, whom the newsman regarded as almost as much a threat to American freedom as the Communists were. And I do mean "focuses." The movie does not attempt to give us a complete biography of Murrow; indeed, we learn little about the man's personal life or career, only about his professional work as regards the McCarthy episode. And the movie is all the better for it. The movie's star, its theme, its focus, and its creation of a time and a place are its essential assets.
George Clooney cowrote and directed the movie as well as co-stars. The movie unfolds in flashback from the perspective of a 1958 dinner honoring Murrow, at which the newsman spoke to the gathering with a remarkable candor about the state of American television at the time. As he is speaking, the story moves back to 1953, when Murrow was working for CBS and making some tentative jabs at Senator McCarthy. In those days there were few people in the press willing to stand up against McCarthy's wild anticommunist accusations. Often, people who did speak out were labeled as Communists sympathizers, blacklisted, and fired from their jobs. It was Murrow's impeccable background, his known loyalty, and his proven patriotism that enabled him to butt heads with arguably the most powerful man in American politics of the day. Yet it was still a gutsy move.
In 1954 Murrow put on his first broadcast criticizing McCarthy's tactics. A month later he allowed McCarthy the chance for a half-hour rebuttal, in which just as Murrow suspected he would do, the Senator defended himself by attacking the credibility of the newsman, practically accusing Murrow of having been a member of the Communist Party. The next week, Murrow made his follow-up, pointing out and easily countering the lies McCarthy attempted to spread about him. Thanks at least in part to Murrow's very public debate with the Senator, the U.S. Senate began their own investigation of McCarthy and ended up censuring him and stripping him of the chairmanship of his anticommunist committee.
One could hardly ask for a better actor than David Strathairn to play Murrow. Not only does Strathairn look and sound like the newsman, he has all of Murrow's mannerisms down pat, including the way he smoked a characteristic cigarette at all times and the slight twitch of his fingers as he held it. Moreover, Strathairn is just as stoic and composed as Murrow appeared in public and private. The look on his face, for example, is priceless when he finishes a program interviewing Liberace and announces to his "Person To Person" audience that in the next show he'll be interviewing Mickey Rooney. We can see his displeasure at the idea of such trivialities, but it paid the bills and allowed him to do his more serious and well-known work. Among my favorite lines was one that Murrow directs at his boss when the head of the CBS news department tells him he is not being fair, that he must present McCarthy's side as well as his own; Murrow replies, "I simply cannot accept that there are on every story two equal and logical sides to an argument."
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.
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