Black and White and "Red" All Over: A Review of "Good Night, and Good Luck"
06 November 2005
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Edward R. Murrow
"A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy"
"See it Now" (CBS-TV)
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In an analysis that has since been labeled one of the great moments in American broadcast journalism, CBS reporter and anchorman Edward R. Murrow stared into the camera March 9, 1954 and challenged red-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. George Clooney’s new film, "Good Night, and Good Luck" dramatizes the events surrounding the historic broadcast, which, the film claims, played no small role in the Senate’s censoring of McCarthy only a few months later.
Clooney’s film is an attractive and engaging vision of American journalism in the fifties. More an ode to responsibleness and professionalism than a record of historical fact, "Good Night, and Good Luck" develops as a story the way any good news story does: with solid backgrounding, good research, clever writing, intensity within the material, and ultimately, with a surplus of hard-hitting truths. Clooney uses every frame of his film to captivate, motivate, and make each member of the audience wish that journalism like Murrow’s was still around (even if that member of the audience feels, outside the theater, that such journalism does exist).
Shot in black and white, entirely indoors and mostly in the CBS studios, "Good Night, and Good Luck" educes a behind-closed-doors attitude, as if the viewer were peaking through a crack – or in this case, through the several station windows in CBS’ studios – to peer momentarily at events that were certain to change the course of a nation even as they were happening. This atmosphere – hazy with the smoke of a half dozen chain-smoking newsmen – is played out at times to the luscious voice of jazz-singer Dianne Reeves, who made her first film appearance in "Good Night, and Good Luck" as an unnamed television variety act always, it seems, down the hall.
With a film shot in black and white, the audience might expect to see an overt photographic artistry or experimentation as much as a well told story: a visual play of the type done by Michael Chapman in "Raging Bull" or Roger Deakins in "The Man Who Wasn’t There" (both Academy Award nominated performances). But "Good Night"s journeyman cinematographer, Robert Elswit, gives in to none of that. Rather, the film’s fast camera movements (both panning and zooming), direct compositions, and generally straightforward lighting coalesce with the newsreel footage of the day, on which Clooney is entirely dependent: all of McCarthy’s ripostes in "Good Night" are newsreels of McCarthy himself. Clooney’s use of the real McCoy McCarthy is both a mimicry of Murrow’s 1954 broadcast, which mostly used scenes collected from McCarthy’s recorded speeches, and, for Elswit, an artistic conjunction: the viewer would never feel so close to the film’s action if they were shown in color or artistic on their face, as both would add an element of re-enactment that does not exist in the film as it is. Ironically, the black and white makes the film feel more present.
Adding to the film’s immediacy is David Strathairn’s performance as Edward R. Murrow. Sitting in the shadows in the back of the room as the CBS gang examine the Senate hearings led by McCarthy, or typing in the wee hours his speech for the pivotal broadcast – tie loose, shirt unbuttoned, but suspenders intact – Straithairn’s Murrow is the uneditorializing ‘50s beat journalist becoming, in a controversial moment, the courageous herald of a revolt. In a part that required gravitas of the kind that few journalists or actors can exhibit on screen, Strathairn delivers with unyielding precision and quiet, deadpan brilliance.
Assisting him on the sides is a ensemble cast of marvelous dimension playing relatively small roles: Clooney, Jeff Daniels, and Frank Langella. In a side story in the film that seems a laughable controversy today, Robert Downey Jr. and Patricia Clarkson play husband and wife Joe and Shirley Wershba, who are forced to hide their marriage from colleagues because of CBS rules that prevent couples from being employed together. The eventual confrontation over the issue toward the end of "Good Night" is a suggestion that exclusivity is not just the mandate of a radical senator.
It has been suggested that "Good Night, and Good Luck" is more than just a historical examination, that its timing in exhibiting a portrait of a remarkable advocate-journalist while the media itself is under fire is uncanny. Clooney – the son of longtime Cincinnati broadcaster Nick Clooney – insists that his film is not a commentary. Instead, he has said, it is the result of him just being a Murrow fan. If that is the case, and if that case leads to such remarkable documents as "Good Night, and Good Luck," perhaps every A-list artist like Clooney should find a Murrow figure for inspiration.
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"Good Night, and Good Luck" (2005)
George Clooney, director
Clooney and Grant Heslov, writers
With David Strathairn, Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., and Patricia Clarkson
Synopsis: United States, early 1950s. In the climate of national fear created by Joseph McCarthy’s Senate investigations into the communist affiliations of public figures, broadcaster Edward R. Murrow finds a buried newspaper story about Milo Radulovich, an Air Force lieutenant discharged because of sealed evidence that members of his family were communist sympathizers. Despite pressure from Air Force officials and CBS’ corporate representatives, Murrow and his colleagues air an episode of their Tuesday-night newshow "See it Now" investigating the case and its questionable proceedings.
The quiet response to the piece – and the lull created by Murrow’s duller assignments – prompts the broadcaster and his executive producer Fred Friendly to go after McCarthy himself. The CBS team researches the footage of McCarthy’s speeches and Senate hearings before Murrow, with explicit reservations from CBS head William Paley, attacks McCarthy’s methods on-air. The result is a publicity battle between Murrow’s advocates and McCarthy’s supporters, until McCarthy, by Murrow’s invitation to issue a rebuttal on Murrow’s show, labels Murrow a figurehead of the Communist’s infiltration into the United States.
Murrow defends himself in a subsequent broadcast before the newspapers report that McCarthy will be investigated by the Army and censored by the Senate. Nevertheless, in a meeting between Murrow, Friendly, and Paley, CBS cancels "See it Now" and moves Murrow to a mid-day Sunday slot. As Murrow leaves the meeting, President Eisenhower delivers a televised speech on patriotic commitment and individual rights.
The film is framed by a late 1950s speech delivered by Murrow on the state of journalism and the need for more social awareness in the public.
Photo Caption: "Cleverest of the Jackel Pack." David Strathairn as the embattled newsman Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck." From the Warner Indpendent Trailer.
Links:
The transcript of Murrow’s March 9, 1954, broadcast, "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy": http://www.honors.umd.edu/HONR269J/archive/Murrow540309.html
Murrow himself: http://www.otr.com/ra/murrow5.ram
"Good Night, and Good Luck" trailer (highly recommended, a brilliant trailer): http://www.apple.com/trailers/warner_independent_pictures/goodnightandgoodluck/trailer/
