The audience at the theater the day we saw Good Night and Good Luck was heavily weighted toward those who were alive when the McCarthy hearings were going on. We wondered about that. Maybe it was nostalgia or a good review on NPR that brought them out. Maybe, as someone suggested later, it was that they all knew Murrow’s son who is reputed to have lived in the area. Or maybe it was simply that having lived through that time, they recognized something in the current era that made them want to confirm their suspicions.
Good Night and Good Luck is the story of a story — the true story of the McCarthy hearings — as told by a popular CBS public affairs broadcaster at the height of the communist witch hunt on national TV. That broadcaster was Edward R. Murrow, whose show See It Now was network television’s first news magazine. He was the first mainstream journalist in America to take on McCarthy directly and expose the excesses and fear-mongering of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee.
This film is only George Clooney’s second directorial effort and it’s a beauty. Although I’m sure much has been made of the period footage and the matching black and white cinematography, a lot of credit goes to the cast for so precisely capturing that 1950s decorum and wit. Except for the quick-cut photography of some of the on-air scenes, you’d hardly know the film wasn’t contemporary with the action. There are some interesting devices too, including the Jazz Singer, whose interstitial crooning of popular ballads of the day adds atmosphere despite having no discernible connection to the story.
Clooney is well aware that he’s made a message film here. His work with fillm maker John Sayles was probably a clue to this tendency, but in this film, he manages to create both a tribute and a warning to media. Edward R. Murrow and his team are portrayed as highly courageous and principled — veritable beacons of responsible journalism. But Murrow himself warns later that the media as a whole is at risk of becoming lost in complacency and an increasingly cozy relationship with government and corporate interests, this in a speech delivered in 1958. To that end, the film’s web site is promoting a group called Participant Productions, to further the cause of citizen journalism as the last best hope for a free press.
As a movie, Good Night and Good Luck is a treat, loaded with good actors, steeped in nostalgia, intelligently written and delivered. And although it does provide a history lesson of sorts, the message never overwhelms the story. In short, this is good old-fashioned cinema like they haven’t made since — the ‘50s.