Murrow's message is even more relevant today than in 1958

Rating: 7/10 (29 November 2009)

Like a number of well-known actors, George Clooney has also tried his hand at producing and directing films. A notable feature of those films where he has acted as producer or director is that many reflect his own liberal political opinions. (This liberalism is not always reflected in his choice of films as an actor, such as the gung-ho political thriller "The Peacemaker"). "Good Night, and Good Luck" was his second film as director and was written by Clooney and his close friend Grant Heslov, who directed him in the recent "The Men who Stare at Goats".
The film portrays the clash between the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy and the television journalist Edward R. Murrow, who made a number of broadcasts attacking McCarthy. (The title comes from the catchphrase with which Murrow routinely closed his broadcasts). It is noteworthy for three brave decisions taken by Clooney. Firstly, it is one of the small minority of films made in black and white since colour became the norm during the sixties. Secondly, there is no actor playing the role of McCarthy. Thirdly, although Clooney was the film's director and co-writer, he is not its star, appearing only in the relatively minor role of television producer Fred Friendly. The star role of Murrow went to David Strathairn, normally as a character actor. Although I had previously seen him in a number of films such as "L.A. Confidential" or "Memphis Belle", he was always in supporting roles; the nearest he came to a leading role in any of those films was as Meryl Streep's screen husband in "The River Wild".
Of these three decisions it is the third which is most successful; Strathairn gives a great performance, which won him a deserved "Best Actor" nomination. The other two decisions are closely linked. Clooney decided to film in black-and-white because he had already decided not to cast anyone as McCarthy. The Senator does, however, appear in genuine newsreel footage from the period, and black-and-white photography was needed to match this. I am not convinced that these decisions were the right ones. Murrow is so much the central character in the movie that it can at times seem unbalanced (in an artistic rather than a political sense); a greater contrast and sense of drama might have been achieved had McCarthy figured as a character in the film. Most black-and-white films from recent decades, like Woody Allen's "Manhattan" or Spielberg's "Schindler's List" have been made with a particular artistic goal in mind, but Clooney's aim of matching the look of fifties' newsreels did not strike me as particularly artistic, and I felt that the film would have been more visually interesting had it been made in colour.
Politically any film on this subject was bound to be controversial, as shown by the various reviews on this board. Although the American Communist Party enjoyed very little popular support (even when they achieved their best-ever national result, in the 1932 Presidential election at the height of the Depression, they polled only 0.3% of the vote), the Soviets did indeed use American Communist sympathisers as spies or agents of influence; in the circumstances of the Cold War it would have been remarkable if they had not used such methods. The fears of McCarthy and his supporters about Communist infiltration and subversion were not, therefore, entirely due to paranoia. What made McCarthyism so objectionable was not his stated aim of defending American democracy against an undemocratic ideology but the methods he used in pursuance of that purported objective. McCarthy was notorious for making allegations unsupported by evidence and for attempting to smear anyone who questioned his methods, and failed to realise that his crusade was actually destructive of the very freedoms he claimed to be protecting. It therefore required considerable courage for Murrow to criticise him; as we see in the film, McCarthy predictably responded to this criticism by making unfounded allegations that Murrow himself had Communist affiliations.
As I stated, the film is perhaps over-reliant on the character of Edward Murrow; most of the other characters are not particularly interesting. The one exception is perhaps Frank Langella's William Paley, the chief executive of CBS television, who is torn between a personal admiration for what Murrow is doing and the commercial demands of his business. (Many of CBS's advertisers disliked what they saw as a left-wing slant to Murrow's broadcasts). The film's subplots about two journalists who have to hide their marriage to save their jobs at CBS and about a third who commits suicide are not particularly well developed.
"Good Night, and Good Luck", however, is worth watching, if only for Strathairn's excellent portrayal of Murrow as a man of decency, integrity and courage. (There is also a very good musical score featuring the jazz singer Dianne Reeves). The film begins and ends with a speech Murrow gave in 1958 to the Radio and Television News Directors Association in which he warned that the power of television to inform and educate the public was being ignored in favour of trivial entertainment. I am not sure what American television was like in the 1950s (British television during that era, especially on the BBC, was dominated by the public service ethos of Lord Reith), but it seems to me that his message is even more relevant today than it was in 1958. For the last few days the lead story in several national newspapers has been the performance of glamour model Katie Price on a "reality" TV show called "I'm a Celebrity- Get Me Out Of Here", and before that the British public's main obsessions were with equally trivial programmes like "Strictly Come Dancing" or "The X Factor". We need more people like Ed Murrow to shake us out of our complacency. 7/10