REVIEWED - GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK: George Clooney's lo-fi drama is a powerful depiction of Cold War '50s America, writes Michael Dwyer
GEORGE Clooney's second feature as a director after the underrated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is set in the early years of television in the 1950s, and takes its title from the line used by pioneering TV journalist Edward R Murrow as he signed off his CBS programme, See It Now.
Apart from the framing device that is a 1958 tribute dinner for Murrow, the movie is set entirely within the CBS building in New York over the tumultuous five-month period beginning in late 1953, when Murrow took on the might of Senator Joe McCarthy. The "junior senator from Wisconsin", as Murrow repeatedly described him with more than a hint of condescension, had tapped into the paranoia of the Cold War era through the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a communist witch hunt that wrecked the careers of left-leaning film directors and screenwriters.
At the centre of Clooney's movie, which he scripted with Grant Heslov, is an impeccable evocation of Murrow by David Strathairn, a fine, prolific actor who has starred in six films for John Sayles. In an admirably adventurous and effective move, Clooney lets the senator play himself, and his adroitly edited film seamlessly cuts between Strathairn's Murrow and archival footage of McCarthy on See It Now.
The movie is, of necessity, in black-and-white to match those shots, but Robert Elswit's rich, striking monochrome compositions further serve to enhance the atmosphere of the period. The drama gains in intensity as it charts the escalating verbal duel between Murrow and McCarthy, and there are only occasional flashes of light relief, as when Murrow interviews Liberace about, among other things, the possibility of marriage. There is, too, the stinging humour that permeates Murrow's alert, acerbic style of presentation.
Clooney clearly empathises with Murrow - not least, it's likely, because his father worked as a TV news anchorman in Cincinnati and Kentucky for 30 years. Consequently, perhaps, the movie glosses over the fact that Murrow was by no means the first or only journalist to take on McCarthy. And the moral integrity of CBS is personified in the depiction of network chief William Paley (Frank Langella) as supportive of Murrow and willing to risk offending crucial sponsors. However, while rival network ABC aired the HUAC hearings for 36 days, CBS refused to drop its popular daytime soaps to carry the hearings.
That said, the film is played with conviction and flair by an exemplary ensemble cast, in which Clooney co-stars as Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly. An accomplished and consistently absorbing re-enactment of a scary era, it operates simultaneously as a cautionary tale in its unavoidable relevance for today's broadcast media.
