In a time when the current
administration pays off purported journalists to report their version of the
news, when a right-wing homophobic homosexual prostitute (think about that one
for a minute) enjoys rare access, under an alias, to White House press
conferences, and even most of the actual reporters simply practice a higher
form of stenography, George Clooney’s Good
Night, and Good Luck provides a salutary and necessary lesson.
The movie chronicles some months in
the 1950s, that much maligned decade, when electronic journalism, then in its
infancy, employed some intelligent and intrepid reporters and editors — yes,
they really existed — who pursued their profession in a climate of fear and
coercion. If the situation sounds familiar, it should: If the shoe pinches,
wear it.
The film shows the news division of
CBS television, led by the legendary Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn)
confronting Senator Joseph McCarthy, his bullying falsehoods, and the
atmosphere of intimidation he created, the construct that came to be known as
McCarthyism. Under the shadow of the infamous blacklist, Murrow and his
colleagues determine to expose the Senator, who manipulated the Cold War
hysteria of the American public, never noted for any particular bravery, by
throwing mendacious accusations of Communist influence at any easy target he
could find.
Murrow’s decision required
considerable courage in a time when the McCarthyite smears threatened the jobs
and careers of innumerable workers in radio, television, theater, and motion
pictures, employers demanded loyalty oaths, and craven informers happily
denounced innocent people to settle old scores or save their own skins. The
film shows not only some of the damage McCarthy inflicted on particular
individuals, but also the difficulties of mounting any sort of defense against his
demagoguery. Murrow must persuade his producer, Fred Friendly (Clooney) and
battle the head of CBS, William Paley (Frank Langella) for permission to take
on the senator; to their credit, both men, despite misgivings, backed his
efforts.
Murrow devoted his program, See It Now, to an exposรฉ of McCarthy’s
statements and methods, in particular a story about an Air Force officer
dismissed because a family member read a leftist publication. The show of
course provoked the bully’s wrath, and he mounted a counterattack, claiming on
television among other lies that the reporter was a member of the Industrial
Workers of the World, the anarchist union, and a pawn of the Soviets.
Instead of using an actor to portray
McCarthy, Clooney simply and wisely shows his actual TV appearance, so that
viewers can see for themselves the menacing manner, the large, heavy head, the
deep, hollow voice always verging on a bellow, the raging bully in full rant.
Clooney shoots the film in stark
black and white, often using oblique angles and tight closeups, which at times
imitate the characteristic techniques of film
noir, and at others recall the grainy appearance of live newscasts on the
uncolored television screens of the 1950s. The method also underlines the
documentary look of Good Night, and Good
Luck, in which actors play identifiable people from a recorded past, and
their actions repeat the events of history.
David Strathairn’s portrayal of
Edward R. Murrow naturally dominates a picture that also serves as a character
study of the man who became one of the icons of news reporting. Famous for his
remarkable radio broadcasts from the London during the blitz, Murrow
established himself as a major figure in the new medium of television.
Handsome, elegant, charismatic, with a distinctive voice and delivery, he
helped create some of the style of investigative reporting and advocacy
journalism that occasionally still distinguishes television news.
Strathairn convincingly imitates the
mellow voice and the faintly arrhythmic speech patterns, with the idiosyncratic
pauses and inflections. Whether accurately or not, he also plays the man as
deadly serious all the time, with barely a hint of lightness or humor, which
makes the movie appropriately intense, but also rather grim.
More important, although some of its
stories remain untold, Good Night, and
Good Luck reminds us all of a dark and troubled moment in the past when an
embattled medium was blessed with talented people with the courage to defend
freedom and dissent against the lies and threats of cowardly demagogues.
Good Night, and Good Luck (PG)
directed by George Clooney, is playing at The Little Theatres and Pittsford
Plaza Cinema.
This article appears in Nov 9-15, 2005.
