'Good Night' a thoughtful, intelligent, well-made film

Rating: 9/10 (15 October 2005)

One has to view this stacked-deck film, about how valiant Edward R. Murrow and some of his CBS cohorts were during the days of blacklisting  led by junior Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph P. MacCarthy  with a grain of salt.
That does not mean I dismiss the movie, however. I think it was one of the year's best, well-crafted and completely engrossing, but I do have to qualify that opinion, a bit. Art is art, and when art and politics meet, sometimes I have to put aside my conservative principals and give credit where credit is certainly due.
While conventional wisdom and historical revisions have made MacCarthy the American equivalent to Adolf Hitler, recent revelations from declassified Soviet documents have suggested he may have been right in some cases  there were Communist sympathizers in some top US government positions.
So, perhaps in retrospect, McCarthy may have been somewhat correct in his overzealous pursuit of what he termed as "enemies of the state." He just did not know how to go about it, sweeping up the good with the bad.
For those uninitiated in the latter issue, rumors began circulating that highly-placed members of the Truman Administration were soft on Communism. McCarthy, elected in 1948 (over Progressive icon Robert LaFollette), soon made public a list of over 3,000 possible subversives working within the Democratic Party (57 of those in important positions).
With the war going badly in Korea and Communist advances in Eastern Europe and in China, the American public was genuinely frightened about the possibilities of internal subversion.
McCarthy, as chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, was in an ideal position to exploit this situation. The McCarthy hearings soon began and the ripples of these investigations washed over hundreds of individuals, some Communists, some not. During that time, individuals such as Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted  the former of perjury, the latter's of espionage  although not because of McCarthy's subcommittee. The Verona Transcripts, along with other released Moscow documents prove these people, and others, were collecting secret information for the Soviet Union.
The problem was that there were innocent people caught up with the guilty, and when the junior senator claimed there were Commies in the US Armed Forces, the walls caved in on him.
Ironically, it wasn't so much CBS which shot down tailgunner Joe, but third-place ABC, which broadcast the McCarthy-Army hearings. CBS refused to air these events because it interfered with the networks popular daytime soap operas.
McCarthy was soon investigated by his own body, and, on Dec. 2, 1954, he was officially censored by the United States Senate, 67-22. Another problem he had was he was terribly unattractive. Short, pudgy, balding, sweating and often rude, he could not rely on any charm factor when it began to turn.
That, and the mainstream press  which was on him like ravenous wolves  kept hammering home all of his faults. This was never brought to bear more clearly than Murrow's "See It Now" program from March 9, 1954  the crux of this film, although he was already in a downward spiral before that broadcast.
In this picture, Cooney chooses to use archival news footage of McCarthy rather than have a Danny Devito-type actor playing him. This is both good and bad. Utilizing these old kinescopes, the senator is done in by his own words and attitudes. It's a very real and scary (to some) enemy, and gives the film a genuine presence of evil.
In real life, Murrow was not all good; nor was McCarthy all bad. For this movie's purposes, however, we are given as black and white of a picture as this film's print.
The movie is populated with hard-drinking, tough-talking, chain-smoking reporters, producers and news reporters, all with a common goal, bringing down the terror they perceived the senator brought with him. But, as Murrows says
in the movie, "McCarthy did not invent the fear; he exploited it."
it is a fantastic trip back to a time of unparalleled paranoia, no matter what side of the political fence one resides on. As Murrow, David Strathairn (Eght Men Out, The Firm), does for his character what Jamie Foxx did for Ray Charles, brings out his mannerisms  strengths, vulnerability and often nervous false bravado.
For someone who has played mostly quiet, dignified supporting characters, this is a breakthrough performance, and one which will surely earn Strathairn an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He plays the role almost like Gary Cooper in High Noon, battling not only his enemies, but worst of all, his so-called friends and colleagues (Cooper, as Will Kane, however, did not have anywhere near the support Strathairn's Murrow does here).
As his producer, Fred friendly, Cooney may cop a supporting nod, but I would give it either to Frank Langella (the pragmatic CBS president William Paley), or veteran actor Ray Wise (as the frightened left-leaning newscaster, Don Hollenbbeck, driven to suicide by the scandal). The film is probably too political to win Best Picture, although it will surely be nominated, as will Clooney for Best Director (who'd a thunk it?!)
Overall, despite being a victory dance for progressives, at times (as well as omitting Murrow's morbid fear of conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr.), I highly recommend this thoughtful, intelligent, well-made and extremely well-acted motion picture.-