Good Night, and Good Luck

Originally published in Decode Magazine

 



USA 2005 1 hour 33 minutes

David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr, Patricia Clarkson, Frank Langella

Paranoia was, for America in the 'Fifties, much more than a passing unease. Guatemala and the rest of Uncle Sam's 'backyard', Green men from Mars, brain-rotting comic books and of course the mirror image of US Imperialism, Soviet Imperialism. Americans ate and breathed the stuff. And smoked it, too. The 'Fifties were perhaps the apotheosis of smoking culture. This (black and white) film captures smoke throughout in several variations of backlighting in scenes reminiscent of those classic jazz photos. Smoke or no smoke, particular attention has been lavished on the lighting, and that, with the high-resolution and subtle gradations in tone and texture typical of colour stock, combine to make this a film worthy of lingering over, and adding to your collection when it moves down to DVD. But the time to see it is now, while it's still on the big screen, and director Clooney is quite honest about its intended relevance to what is happening in the US/UK today. It will prove to be the kind of movie where audience connection might be expected to include applause, and perhaps even some heckling.

The attention to period detail even unto the new Nylon shirts with visible vests, make it easy to forget that this is not in fact a documentary or at least an old movie; everything looks self-consciously Modernist and Important and you would not be surprised to catch a glimpse of the young Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster in there somewhere.

It's a reason to be cheerful that this film has been made now, with the War on Fright acting as a cover for the erosion of our hard-won liberties and democratic process, just as the 'Soviet Threat' was talked up before.

Ed Murrow, who began his broadcasting career in radio, moved into television with the conviction, like Reith in the UK, that its supreme function was to inform and educate. This is no encomium for a faultless hero though: there is a sly dig at his perhaps unconscious acceptance of the realpolitik of compromise to the extent of the product of one of the TV shows' sponsors, Kent, being placed permanently in his hand or stuffed in his mouth while he addressed his audience. Director Clooney is also able to hint that behind Murrow's elegance and finely-crafted polemics he was first at odds with his boss, as when he didn't quite round off an interview with Liberace, cutting it short rather than carry on with a bland guided tour of his home (an intercut with the actual Candelabra King, from the archives); the Bad Guy, Joe McCarthy, also appears in archive recordings, although his famously bombastic and occasionally drunken performances have been skipped, possibly to avoid giving the film the crude pantomime flavour of, say, 'Fahrenheit 451'. David Strathairn should have been close to an Oscar for his impeccably understated but dynamic performance. If he never acts again, he has a fine set of laurels to rest on.

The story is book-ended by a celebratory dinner held for Murrow by his colleagues, opening with his welcome to the rostrum, going into flashback and ending with his catchphrase. This would be good enough as a punch line, but the film ends on a suitably wry, reflective mood with Dianne Reeves, who is caught in action in the next studio several times throughout the story, providing colour or emphasis, singing with Rosemary Clooney's old band, no less; and again, detail is observed, with Rosemary's own original arrangements. Tim Robbins' 'Cradle will Rock', the true story of art depicting Diego Rivera, Orson Wells and The Workers versus right-wing paranoid politics in 'thirties Manhattan, acts as a good prequel to this.

One of the important subtexts is the bravery Murrow showed in going against the flow, breaking news media ranks in standing up against Senator McCarthy at a time when Joe had grabbed the lead role in fighting the 'enemy within'. Today in the UK, practically all professional journalists and papers, rightwing or leftwing, are united in not merely tolerating but praising one-time Sun editor editor Kelvin McKenzie as no more than a decent bloke who likes a good laugh. Compare and contrast.

This story has all the complexity of the power politics to be found anywhere in publishing, broadcasting and of course, political life, from Shakespeare's 'Caesar' right up to the new millenium backstab tango in the House of Commons. If it has been trimmed to make a good movie, and it most probably has, it works. Clooney is managing very well to pull off the trick that Orson Wells established but lost interest in: making a couple of hack mainstream films, doing small parts in daft action movies to finance the important work, like 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' and now 'Good Night'. Long may his lum reek.