Warner IP, 2005
David Strathairn
Robert Downey Jr.
Patricia Clarkson
Frank Langella
Jeff
Daniels
George Clooney
In the years that followed the
Second World War America was seized by a nationwide panic.
The United States and the USSR were the only remaining
world super powers, and the USA was intent on retaining
its global standing. Whilst in the west the Allies were
claiming victory over Europe, in the East, communism had
taken firm root in China, which, by 1949, was declared
a communist country. Across the border, by 1950, war had
broken out in Korea between the communist north and non-communist
south. The Korean War has long been viewed as a proxy war
between the USA and its allies, and the Soviet Union, both
vying for the number one spot on the global podium. The
fear was that if North Korea fell to communism, the next
country to fall in this ‘domino affect’ would
be Japan, and that the ‘red scare’ would creep
its way across the Pacific into the US, and undermine everything
that capitalist America stood for. The US Government’s
fear was that communist sympathisers, and indeed known
communists, had already managed to infiltrate state departments
and would ‘rot’ America from the inside out.
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, a Republican of Wisconsin,
headed the anti-communist ‘witch-hunts’ and
helped to drive the people of America into a frenzy of
fear. So began a period of intense suspicion in the US
during the early 1950’s where the line between the
search for communists within the US and the destruction
of civil liberties for non-conformists and liberals was
irrevocably blurred. America become subject to a different
kind of terror campaign.
George Clooney’s Good
Night, and Good Luck is set in a time when McCarthyism was at
its peak: A naval pilot was fired from his job on the grounds
of being suspected of having communist tendencies; this
was just the thing that the Wisconsin Senator was advocating
in his crackdown on communism. This story caught the attentions
of the CBS news team, not for its propagandist assertions,
but for the fact that the pilot had been dismissed without
trial and that the so-called communist leanings were not
proven.
CBS news reporter Edward R. Murrow (played here
by David Strathairn) had become a paragon of integrity
when he broadcast commentaries from London during the Blitz.
Murrow, supported by his producer, Fred Friendly (George
Clooney) and his team of reporters, chose to highlight
the naval pilot’s story on their news documentary
show ‘See it Now’, thus pitching them directly
in opposition to McCarthy’s measures.
Shot wholly in black and white and seemingly through a blanket
haze of cigarette smoke, this film looks as smooth as the
scotch that one imagines is locked in the news teams’ drawers.
Strathairn, whose face fills the screen for much of the 90
minutes, is utterly hypnotic as Murrow, with his velvet voice
cutting through the smoke filled air with a captivating precision
of syntax. Clooney takes the more reserved (yet enduringly
endearing) role of Fred Friendly. The close-up shots of Friendly’s
glances up at Murrow from the vantage of lying on the studio
floor reflect the high regard that both Friendly and indeed
Clooney, held the esteemed journalist in. Clooney is the
son of a news anchorman and the film is as much homage to
his father’s profession as to the iconic Murrow himself.
The most sublime ‘casting’ was that of McCarthy.
Should an actor have played the senator, I think the role
could have opened itself up to criticism of despotism and
banality of language. After all, who was more despotic and
banal than the man himself? The war of words between Murrow
and McCarthy was played out via a televised medium, and so
it was in the film, with video footage used to relay McCarthy’s
words. The actions of the CBS team may have awakened the
world to the failings of McCarthy and his House of Un-American
Activities, but, as the film shows, all victories come at
a cost.
I was totally bowled over by this
film, visually and thematically – the resonances of
which are particularly pertinent today, such as striving
for truth behind a governmental shroud and media induced
moral panics. It calls into question the role of television
and the balance between placating advertisers and investors
against making quality broadcasting. Good
Night, and Good Luck serves to remind how effective a weapon good television
can be when it is carried out with professionalism and integrity.
