User reviews

My hat to George Clooney. He doesn't take the easy way out. His seriousness of purpose is undeniable and his talents as a filmmaker a concrete reality. This, his second feature, is a no frills account of a period in American history that left visible scars but, as it happens, many have forgotten. History repeats itself but its protagonists seem diluted in this modern obsession with political correctness. David Strathairn - best actor at the Venice Film Festival - is chillingly perfect as Edward R Murrow, reminding us that TV times have changed in an unrecognizable way. The space for real thought on network news has been replaced by the circus atmosphere of 24 hour cable shows with loud mouths, sound effects and video graphics. The inter-cutting between Murrow/Strathairn and the real Senator McCarthy creates the perfect illusion of a startling reality. The timing of the film couldn't be more perfect. I hope we can all fill in the voids and connect the dots. It's time to look back and think before our past becomes our future. Thank you Mr Clooney, thank you very much.

Actor/Director George Clooney pays tribute to truth and decency amid distrust and uncertainty in the Communist witchhunts with his recreation of its greatest hero, the newsman of newsmen, Edward R. Murrow, in Good Night, and Good Luck.

In the early 1950's, the Communist scare and the subsequent subversion of citizens' rights was at its apex with blacklists and rampant accusations resulting in ruined lives and careers. Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) was the grand master of the news airwaves in the infantile medium of television. With his show's director, Fred Friendly (George Clooney) and his production team, he picks one obscure news item regarding an Air Force serviceman who is dismissed due to unspecified charges. Murrow and CBS essentially take on the US Air Force amid this climate of suspicion and presumed guilt. Later, Murrow's team takes on Senator Joseph McCarthy by making critical comments of the senator's own words and contradictions. McCarthy retaliates with accusations of Murrow's supposed association with un-American groups just as the parent network, CBS, reels under sponsorship pressure and the unpredictable whims of network president William Paley (Frank Langella). As Murrow and his own staff come under tense scrutiny by McCarthy and even CBS, public reaction and the response of the print media come to the forefront.

Nothing can compare to the words that were written and spoken with such conviction and honesty as those uttered by Murrow. The title of the movie is a direct quote that Murrow employed to sign off each week at the close of his interview shows. The filmmakers (including director Clooney and writers Clooney and Grant Heslov) were wise to let the text stand on its own. They also benefit from good performances from a cast headed by Strathairn (L.A. Confidential, A League of Their Own), a journeyman actor who has finally found a core role to call his own, and he makes the most of it. He gets the mannerisms and cadence down quite convincingly, and while Strathairn may not look exactly like Murrow, he has the persona nailed. Frank Langella (Dave) is excellent as the mercurial Paley whose support of Murrow was tenuous at best. Ray Wise (Twin Peaks) registers in what could have been a more defined role as a doomed newsman whose guilt by association triggers some life changing events. Patricia Clarkson (The Station Agent) and Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin) as secretly married staffers, Joe and Shirley, round out the cast. Ironically, perhaps the best performance can be attributed to McCarthy himself as newsreels offer a fascinating, perverse glance at the infamous politician whose flamboyance and dogged theatrics doomed the careers of many government officials and film or television actors. The duel between Murrow and McCarthy seems like two heavyweights going at it verbally in the public arena.

The cinematography by Robert Elswit (Magnolia) is crisp and starkly lit in black and white to evoke the past. The production design and costumes are consistent with the period. Just the sight of newsmen typing on old style typewriters or production assistants carrying around film reels instead of videotape or discs is amusing. The editing by Stephen Mirrione (Traffic, 21 Grams) is tight and well paced. At times the studio broadcasts of a female blues singer bridges various sequences in theme and mood. The broadcast of a live network news program is staged with realism and with the frenzy and excitement that only live television could bring. One wonders what TV veterans like Sidney Lumet or Robert Altman could have brought to the table.

Murrow's show was kind of a precursor to the current granddaddy of all prime time news shows, 60 Minutes. It was interesting to see that his was not a perfect career having to mix fluffy showbiz interviews with such personalities as Liberace on his Person-to-Person show with legitimate news reports. At 93 minutes, the film surprisingly seems a bit short. You almost feel like this is a big budget episode of the famous You Are There reenactment shows. The story ends almost abruptly as it begins being bookended by a formal event honoring Murrow in 1958.

A couple of things don't quite work in the film. The characters of Joe and Shirley must come to terms with the network's policy forbidding marriage among its coworkers, but this subplot doesn't significantly serve to move the story forward. Clooney shows a workman-like approach to directing the film but it just doesn't grab you as emotionally as you would like. You sit there entranced by the history but are never fully given to the pathos of its characters. Instead, the film becomes almost a quasi-documentary bereft of much feeling.

As previous films have dealt with the Red Scare and blacklists, this film compares favorably with The Front and the great television movie Fear on Trial. Although the Soviet Union was a major threat to the United States during the Cold War, the accusatory enemy from within was perhaps as great a menace. The implications and parallels to today's political climate and the role television has in shaping perception are clearly the point Clooney and gang are trying to make. Murrow's formal speech, which begins and ends the film's story, is itself a prophetic and sobering commentary and indictment of the possibilities of television and foreshadows the future with amazing prescience. It shows that one man made a difference. Such is the testament to a heroic reporter whose integrity this film manages to capture, albeit in a brief history lesson.

"Good Night, and Good Luck" is the kind of film that has elicited strong opinions in the IMDb forum. In fact, most of the critics point out at the manipulation of the actual events and what they perceive as character assassination of the late Joseph McCarthy and the role he played during the "witch hunt" conducted by the late senator from Wisconsin. Whether these points are right, or wrong, in the minds of the contributors, most seem to disregard the film on that criteria, alone.

In fact, "Good Night, and Good Luck" shows a time in the American past that served as the model in the way television introduced the format in which the news was going to be shown to the country using the emerging technology to keep people informed. As such, CBS under William Paley's leadership, amassed a lot of talent and it became the yardstick in which other news programs were going to be judged against. George Clooney, in his second directorial job, recreates what he and his co-writer, Grant Heslov, thought about that period at the beginning of the era of television news.

The film has a documentary style that serves well to illustrate the story being told. Most of it occurring in the CBS studios in New York during the fifties. The crisp black and white cinematography, by Robert Elswit, gives the movie a nostalgic look to the way things were done in those days. Mr. Clooney has inserted scenes where a black jazz singer interprets some standard songs as though it might have been the next program following the actual news hour, and act as a buffer in the events being presented.

At the center of the story is Edward R. Murrow, the CBS anchor at the time. Mr. Murrow was greatly admired for his contributions during WWII and his broadcasts from London bringing commentaries about the war to America. Mr. Murrow was a giant in the field, most admired by all Americans because his integrity and the way he presented his stories, which ranged from the sublime, to the ridiculous, as it is the case with the interview with Liberace in Sherman Oaks where he asked the entertainer about his future wedding plans.

The strong cast assembled for the film is excellent. David Strathairn, one of our most versatile actors plays the leading role. His take on Murrow's mannerisms and the way he spoke to his audience in front of the camera is captured with great detail. Mr. Strathairn gives a good performance, but one never really knows much about the man in the way the screen play has been written. Yes, one gets the impression of Mr. Murrow's high ethics, but as far as what made him tick, one has to wait for another biopic to find out.

The ensemble cast plays well under Mr. Clooney's direction. Robert Downey Jr., Patricia Clarkson, Ray Wise, Frank Langella, Jeff Daniels, and George Clooney are seen in the newsroom as they portray their models under Mr. Clooney's direction.

I don't know where to begin. If one judges a film by its ability to literally transport the viewer to another time and place, this film succeeds. If one judges a film by the cinematography, the composition of the scenes, whether the characterizations are well drawn, this film succeeds. If one judges a film's merits on integrity, truthfulness, honesty, this film succeeds. Good Night and Good Luck captures a moment in time.We look back on the fifties as a simpler time, our period of innocence. This film tells us straight and true that it was no simpler and no more innocent than our lives today.In fact, the sharpest contrast drawn between today and back then is the intelligence and the literacy, the erudition and the commitment to the tenets of good journalism of Edward R. Murrow and his crew.I cannot picture a Brian Williams or anyone else telling the owner of the network, as Murrow tells Bill Paley, "I can't make it to the game tonight. Thanks for inviting me, but I'm busy tearing down your network." A flawlessly executed film, the acting ensemble well cast, the point clearly and eloquently made, this film should be nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and anything else that's out there. Thank you George Clooney. Your father is correct. "You got it right." Thank you Steven Soderburgh. Thank you, Mr. Murrow.

The film does not - as some have suggested - unfairly portray McCarthy as a sub-human monster. Its presentation of McCarthy is limited strictly to the thread of the storyline and never does it waver toward name-calling or character assassination. This is particularly striking given that MCarthy was a well-seasoned alcoholic and clearly suffered from a narcissistic personality disorder. He was ripe for parody because his eccentricities were so pronounced, but this film is remarkably even-handed about the Senator's deeds and behavior. There are no allusions either to his peculiar friendship with Roy Cohn, whose notorious homosexual relations with private G. David Schine eventually led to McCarthy's demented charge that the Army was infested with Communists. Some have even suggested that McCarthy was no stranger to gay trysts. All of this could have made for an explosive - and typical - "Hollywood" movie and would indeed have been propagandistic, shallow and simple-minded. Instead Clooney has made an intelligent, cogent, fair-minded film about ethics, high standards and integrity.

"Good Night, And Good Luck" is one of the best films of the year. Beautifully directed by George Clooney (who also co-stars), this is a film that exercises a powerful message and social commentary that remains relevant today. Filmed in tight frames of black and white, "Good Night, And Good Luck" also brings back the smoke-filled atmosphere of broadcast journalism and television in the 1950s. The film focuses around CBS journalist Edward Murrow and his attempts to take down Senator Joseph McCarthy through his news program, "See it Now." David Strathairn, playing Edward Murrow, gives one of the best performances of the year and is surely swimming in Oscar territory. Clooney makes his biggest leap in the film industry yet. He, too, may join Strathairn for an Oscar nomination, but in the Best Director category. Filming in black and white, and interspersing news conferences with actual footage of McCarthy, Clooney is an emerging talent worth watching. The ending and the very last frame lets "Good Night, And Good Luck" stay with those who watch it. It ends very abruptly, as if Clooney wants to show the failing, yet lasting effort Murrow had--how he stands as a symbol for the continuation of truth and who is willing to bring it out to the public. The end has a very honest bleak tone to it--we want to see Murrow continue to let the public know what's actually going on in the country, but one man's fight isn't good enough. Clooney chooses a perfect and powerful ending. He makes a bold statement on how public interest in television has contributed to the decay of society, whether it is 1950 or 2005.

I've had the "Edward R. Murrow" Collection from CBS for years and have enjoyed watching it's biography of Murrow, the complete Milo Radulovich, McCarthy and Annie Lee Moss shows many times. I'm sure George Clooney must have these as well as he used the actual footage extensively in his fine drama "Good Night and Good Luck". As a previous poster said, by concentrating on what was actually presented, Clooney is able to focus on the ethical issues that were the real substance of the broadcasts, rather than the tragicomic personalities involved. He wants us to see that the same issues are in our lives today, (Clooney has had his own battles with would-be modern McCarthys like Bill O'Reilly), but he isn't going to force the issue. He's doing exactly what Murrow and Friendly did with the McCarthy broadcast: using the actual record to tell the story.

There are minor, but significant embellishments, mostly an impressive cast of actors who can tell us more with one look than an entire speech. Leading the way is David Straithairn as Murrow. Except for possessing a higher pitched voice than the original, he's got his man down cold. I would pick Frank Langella as William Paley, here presented as a man with ideals but who is rooted in the realities of business, the sort of guy who has to make the tough decisions the idealists like Murrow don't have to or want to deal with. Then there is Ray Wise as the vulnerable Don Hollenbeck, who was one of the co-creators of "You Are There", a program this film somewhat resembles. He wound up being "there" when he didn't really want to be.

What really enhances the show is the black and white photography, (actually, according to the notes, it was "The film was shot on color film on a grayscale set, then color-corrected in post" – whatever that means). Not only does it heighten the drama, (magazine photographers, in the days when they had a choice, said "black and white for drama, color for excitement"), but the tremendous resolution seems to bring out each furrow and poor on each person's face, allowing the viewer to see into their souls.

Well-acted across the board, I loved the Patricia Clarkson-Robert Downey combo so much that I kind of wish they had their own movie. Stylish and effective cinematography- the darting to and fro, the perpetual smoke, the use of shadow and silhouette. All very well done. And the overall message of the film- that the media and the American public need to wake the *beep* up and pay attention- is one that I heartily commend.

Part of my problem with the film stems from the fact that I am a history student with a keen interest in the time period. And Clooney does nothing to place his story in historical context. He's just taking pieces of a story and expecting the audience to fill in the rest. Like the loyalty oath piece. It really has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It is not explored further in any other scene. It is not really debated. Just one scene, designed to get the audience to recoil and say "wasn't that horrible?" Then it's not mentioned again. No reference to Stalin...hell, no reference to the Cold War, the atomic bomb, the Korean War, or even any aspect of the Red Scare other than McCarthy. There's one line about Alger Hiss near the end, but it provides little context or explication. The film makes it seem like McCarthy was a one-man wrecking crew instead of a particularly ruthless and ambitious politician taking advantage of a fear that was already widespread and deeply penetrating.

And loyalty oaths still exist, by the way, and the truth is that for the most part we accept them. I had to sign a loyalty oath to be a public schoolteacher.

As for the idea that Clooney is trying to make commentary about how society has changed in the past 50 years, I agree that such is his intent. In this regard he is clearly inspired by Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, which his company produced and which he vigorously promoted. But Haynes does it much more elegantly. He shows his characters confounding their stereotypical roles; Clooney merely reinforces them. I wanted to see Patricia Clarkson's character do something other than fetch newspapers. I wanted to see a black character do something other than belt out jazz tunes that lay out the plot like something in an old musical. Otherwise, their presence smacks of tokenism, of the worst kind of liberal condescension. Also, Haynes' film is a fiction commenting on the fictional representations and actual reality of a bygone era. Clooney's is, at least in its central scenes, practically a documentary. Having subplots whose primary purpose is smug contemporary commentary detracts from the versimilitude.

The scene near the end in the office between Langella and Strathairn is the thematic lynchpin of the film. However, this is where I think Clooney most clearly falls short. It seems to me that they address Murrow's earlier complicity in the Red Scare (re:Alger Hiss) surreptitiously by burying it in a set of defensive comments that are presented like a bunch of excuses for the network's moral cowardice. It's scripted in such a way that Murrow does not have to respond. As for the idea that corporations run the media for profit and that the nightly news is more distraction than edification ...well, that was a bold statement when Network came out 30 years ago, not so much now anything more than stating the obvious. I wanted more from this.

I almost feel like Clooney was torn between making a documentary and making something truly scathing in the Network vein. As documentary the film is brought down by its lack of context, which is a shame because Strathairn's line readings are chillingly good. As social commentary the film simply doesn't say anything particularly perceptive, and at times it comes across as liberal bourgeois moralizing.

This film was a real treat, with Strathairn's dead-on performance as legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow a sure bet for at least an Oscar nomination. Perhaps the best decision by writer-director George Clooney was to cast no one in the role of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Instead, Clooney uses actual footage of McCarthy in the HUAC hearings and press conferences. Movies based on actual historical events often sensationalize events, but the extensive use of documentary footage brings home the reality of this movie's story line.

In addition to Strathairn's best performance to date, the entire cast delivers, from Clooney himself as Murrow's producer Fred Friendly, to Frank Langella as CBS chairman William Paley, to Ray Wise as the insecure anchorman Don Hollenbeck. If there is a weak point in the cast, it is Jeff Daniels, who was given little to do in the role of news director Sig Mickelson and did little with it.

As most people today are acquainted with the 1950s through black-and-white images, the decision to film in black-and-white also feels appropriate, and helps the documentary footage to blend in seamlessly with the filmed actors. The only real failing of the movie is the lack of real drama. Throughout, Murrow and the gang are seen to have the upper hand, although they sweat about the potential consequences of every action. The slice of history, the ideas presented concerning the proper role of news media, and the terrific performances all more than make up for this, however, and I strongly recommend this film to those who lived through the McCarthy era and to those, such as myself, who only have witnessed it in the rear view mirror.

"Good Night, and Good Luck," tells the story of CBS Newsman Edward R. Murrow's courageous fight against Senator Joseph McCarthy. As a student of both history and journalism, I have viewed Murrow as a hero and was very excited to see this film. Overall, David Strathairn's performance is impeccable, capturing Murrow's nuances, genius, and even the cigarette addiction that eventually killed him.

George Clooney directed this film and plays Fred Friendly, who produced Murrow's broadcasts. Clooney also is credited with co-writing the screenplay, and that's where the problem arises. Aside for the lengthy film footage of actual Senate sub-committee testimony, and the genuine, on-screen words of Murrow and others, the screenplay is sparse.

We get very little insight into the characters of Murrow, Friendly, and CBS President William Paley (played by Frank Langella). In addition, Clooney wastes a superb supporting cast including Patricia Clarkson, Robert Downey Jr., and Jeff Daniels.

Clearly, George Clooney has made a noble film that captures the spirit of the time and the words of those involved, and if there was ever any doubt that McCarthy was a self-serving hypocrite, it is erased by this film. But the director failed to develop characters that were interesting in their own right. As such, the film is only slightly more involving than a documentary on the subject might have been.

Doesn't work as a piece of story-telling but it has a lot to commend it, notably the acting, in particular the central performance by David Strathairn and a very fine one by Frank Langella. The choice of black-and-white was presumably made so that the archive footage would fit in pretty much seamlessly, and I think this pretty much worked, although the use of a haze of cigarette smoke was overused. I could see the point of the little subplots but they still seemed kind of malnourished. As a history film it seems to me to be preferable to the Spielberg or Mel Gibson approaches, which err on the side of entertainment. There's no doubting the seriousness of Good Night and Good Luck - it avoids sentimentality except, maybe, in one area, which is in its uncritical acceptance of journalists as latter-day knights, guardians of our freedoms. Ed Murrows are few and far between, after all. Most journalists would never have dared to do what he did. I would imagine that Clooney and his team decided that to show a counterbalance to the crusading journalism on view would involve broadening the film out and weakening its power. So what we get is a rather dry affair, but it was worth making and is worth seeing. Keep an eye on your freedoms, this film says. That is a worthwhile message.

Of all the critically friendly 'Oscar Contenders' of 2005, Good Night and Good Luck was the one that stood out the most for me. Not because I have an interest in the plot, or any confidence in the people that made it, even; but merely because it seemed to come out of nowhere, and it's often these films that become the surprise hit of the year. With that in mind, I am disappointed to say that, given the task of describing this film in one word, I would have to select the word 'dull'. Director and star George Clooney has done a great job of ensuring that his film looks and feels as it should; we are given a convincing portrait of the USA during the 1950's, and the film is always lovely to look at. However, it's good points end there; as there is barely any plot to speak of, and the film simply feels like a timeline of events. The plot revolves around the cold war, and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Two journalists; reporter Edward R. Murrow and producer Fred Friendly, decide to take on the senator and expose him for inspiring fear in the American people.

The way that George Clooney uses archive footage instead of an actor cast in the role of the senator is a really inspired move; but the inspiration stops there. We are never allowed into the heads of any of the characters. Their actions show, but we are never given any motivation, and this makes the film very hard to care for on an emotional level. David Strathairn fits the film in that he looks the part; but like the rest of it, he is never given a chance to shine. Robert Downey Jnr and Patricia Clarkson are entirely wasted in a subplot that has little point, while George Clooney fails also to make any kind of impression in the acting department. To be honest, I'm really surprised that this film did go down well with the critics. Good Night and Good Luck is a purely aesthetic experience, and despite the fact that it looks great; surely great films cannot be called such merely because of how they look. I'm sure that George Clooney thought he was making a great film here, but it's missed the mark entirely. If you're really interested in the subject of this film, you might get some kind of enjoyment out of it; but since this film is basically a glorified documentary, you'd probably be better off seeing an actual documentary. Disappointing.

I just saw this film, and I have three words to sum it up: A terrific film.

Yes, there were people who thought this was just leftist propaganda but they all walked out in agreement that 'Good Night' was a very well made movie about a person who exploited fear in the people of the united states in 1953.

David Strathairn gives the performance of his career as Edward R Murrow, a legendary 1950's news reporter. His performance has the complexities, mannerisms and subtleties that you would expect from Murrow. His performance does for Murrow for what Adrien Brody did for Wladyslaw Spilzman, you truly do believe him. Count on a Oscar nomination.

George Clooney's direction, writing and acting are all very strong this side of Roberto Benigni's 'Life is Beautiful'. Clooney may direct himself to his first Oscar.

Another revelation in this movie is Frank Langella, who plays Bill Paley (the head of CBS). He backs Murrow and Friendly to the end, but also tells them the cold, hard truth . He tries so hard not to jeopardize the both of them.

All that being said, this may be the underdog movie at this year's Academy Awards. Strathairn and Clooney both give outstanding performances but this year their competition is stiff. Straithairn going after Philip Seymour Hoffman for his performance in ' Capote ' and Clooney going after Peter Sarsgaard for his performance in 'jarhead'.

A very good film and worth the 90 minutes of your time.

This film portrays an episode in television history. That period was covered in a class on documentary film that I took many years ago as an undergraduate. So, I've seen the full episodes of Murrow's challenge, McCarthy's attack on Murrow, and Murrow's response.

McCarthy overreached when he went after the Army. And Murrow, I have learned from other sources, waited until McCarthy was politically wounded before challenging him. These elements are missing from the film. My guess is they were omitted to avoid boring the audience.

For those with no experience with McCarthyism, the film may be boring anyway as some have already commented.

However, like Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, which set McCarthyism in the time frame of the Salem witch trial hysteria, this film does a decent job of portraying the atmosphere of fear engendered by continual hysterical threats to the personal safety of the American people from within or from without. It does not show the chilling effect the atmosphere of fear imposes on the journalist.

It does show a relationship between the corporation and the journalist. This is an important point. It is well made. I find this the most relevant part of the film.

More auspicious than his first directing effort, George Clooney has directed what is definitely a good film here. The visual side is excellent, with the feel of both a documentary and noir combined into one. While the technical aspects are great, it is a bit shy of being a brilliant film. There is little to complain about as such, except for the inclusion of a subplot with two supporting characters that is meant to be symbolism of McCarthyism, but it is too obvious to work, and is awkwardly fitted into the storyline. The main problem with the film is that it lacks in complexity. It portrays the important events but it does not dare to deeply explore them. Murrow is not explored in much depth as a person either. There is no emotional involvement to be had - it is not much different from reading a history book. Sure, the film tries to say some things about television and the power of mass media, but the ideas are delivered more so as lessons than as subtle and effective messages. So, some parts of the film do not quite work, but it is a fine production overall. If not quite brilliant, the performances are competent and the sound recording and soundtrack music help in establishing atmosphere. It is a well-done film, but when push comes to shove, it had the potential to be more than just a good film. It is certainly worth seeing though, if for nothing else than to see what Clooney is capable of as a director.

For those of You UNDER 75..... There is no way You can have ANY DIRECT recollection of this AWESOME 1950's TV Series!

But BEFORE diving in......FIRST... Let us FOCUS on the Title's Content and Context:

In GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, George Clooney really gets to show us his versatility in the Seventh Art! He wears many hats here, serving as Director, Co-author and Co-star of this gripping and chilling film.

It is a thoroughly engrossing "Truth is Stranger than Fiction" Story (my favorite cinema genre!) of the persecution of alleged communists by certain powerful elements within the government of the United States in the early 50s.

GOOD NIGHT won two well deserved Oscars... Underlining for all of us, "Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it" ...I certainly think this is the operative phrase today, considering the myriad of illegal, unconstitutional surveillance and intrusions, put in place during the recent BUSH presidency, monitoring the conversations of its citizens to "ensure our national safety!".

MOST Definitely a must see film for anyone and everyone who is interested in our recent modern history.

10*********** ENJOY! / DISFRUTELA!

Any comments, questions or observations, in English o en Español, are most welcome!

An American citizen working abroad, I watched a preview screening of "Good Night and Good Luck" in early December 2005 in Melbourne. David Straitharn (Murrow) was on hand to introduce the film, and he commented that journalists in the U.S. covet "the Edward R. Murrow Award." Having won one myself, I had to suppress an Arnold Horshack-like desire to jump up and seek acknowledgment.

Born five years after the "See It Now" that became the flash point for the decline and fall of Joseph McCarthy, I always felt uncomfortable in a lifetime of hindsight watching conventional wise men excoriate "the junior Senator from Wisconsin." Yes, his rapacious lust to seize on America's post-war, post-Berlin Airlift, post-nukes paranoia was unforgivable.

But while McCarthy was reckless with his grabbed power, I often wondered if the backlash against The Red Scare wasn't itself tinged with counter abuse.

Fearing this would be another case of a good point made badly (see "Fahrenheit 9-11"), I was pleasantly surprised to find "Good Night and Good Luck" to be even-handed, even paying some lip service to my lifelong concerns.

It wasn't so much the quiet, understated confidence of Murrow in this film that sold me on the fact Clooney provided an untilted platform. It was more the balance offered by the characterization of Paley, who fortunately was not portrayed as the right-wing bad guy. Nor was he fairy-taled into some crusader, either, as the why-don't-they-make-executives-like-that-anymore liberals would have us believe.

For this, Clooney deserves a great deal of credit. Yes, the long, unwieldy stretch of HUAC testimony made the second half of the film a bit ponderous. But that's a quibbling point against a foundation of overwhelming cinematic excellence.

The '50s were never more beautiful than this film. The long-gone mood of unabated scotch and cigarettes, the anachronistic anti-nepotism policy at CBS, the heavy woolen clothing, the horrible eye wear, the great jazz - the forgotten art of how to light a film for black and white. It's all there - and a wonderful tribute to the son of an old-school broadcaster like Nick Clooney.

A little spoilage, though, from Down Under. As I sat in the nearly full cinema on a Monday night, the crowd - mostly in their 20s-60s - giggled at the oddest places. The quaint Kent commercial. The occasional, go-get-'em dialog. The news anchoring tragic and his endorsement of Murrow's broadcast. Giggles. Very off-putting, almost disrespectful to a time gone-by.

It was almost as if they were saying, "Yeah, we know better, and we were born that way." Glad to know somebody got to skip the '50s in order to get to the 21st century.

This 2005 movie took the side of due process and the free contention of different views. The enemy of these was the reactionary witch hunt for communists, which began after World War Two and by the time-setting of the movie, 1954, was in its death throes known as McCarthyism. The movie is a celebration of liberals and bourgeois democracy.

Frank Langella has a considerable supporting role as William Paley, the boss of CBS. Now in 2022 Langella's name and career have been destroyed by cancel culture. He was at work shooting scenes in a film adaptation of a poem by Edgar Allen Poe. An actress playing the part of his wife complained about an alleged transgression on a set, in front of the crew, in a scene the two did fully clothed - he touched her leg! The corporation, Netflix, fired the 84-year-old Langella with no due process, with no sense of proportion between the alleged offense and the destruction of his career. George Clooney made a movie against McCarthyism. Cancel culture is the new McCarthyism.

Habeas corpus, due process, and guilt by association play a mighty part of our daily news in the Bush administration. It is sadly reminiscent of the "good old days" from other periods of history in our country, notably the period covered by this fine film. Pastor Martin Niemoeller's quote from Nazi Germany is important to the theme of the film, "First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me." Murrow was a great American in his time. The question is who carries the burden of the U.S. Constitution's vital safeguards of political liberty today? This writer is having difficulty naming courageous contemporary journalists, too.

This movie is rather dull for the casual viewer. Starting with the camera angles and movement; using black and white, Clooney gives it a real air of the 1950s, however the camera is very stagnant with almost no movement or dynamics at all. The movie has one of two scenes. 1. A few abstract camera angles while endless amounts of dialogue plays, and 2. a slow moving shot with people bustling around with an audio overlay of slow Jazz. While there is a few other types of shots, the movie mostly alternates between these two. For about 30 minutes I was completely lost as to what this movie was trying to portray, so I googled all of the names and events I could hear. After hours of study time, I finally grasped what these people were even talking about. The issue is the dialogue and actual sound clips are so old or they are drown so heavily by background noise or static that you need the captions on to even understand them. This movie was really solid once I researched it and the feelings felt very real. I wouldn't recommend this movie to my friends, but for someone who is interested in the red scare of the 50s, this is a must

The photography, costumes, and the music in this movie were great. But style is where the brilliance of this movie ends. The film presents a highly skewed view of historical events, oversimplified and tailored to fit the biases of George Clooney.

Joe McCarthy is shown only in newsreel footage making him a 2 dimensional character. This really diminishes the impact. He certainly isn't the ugly threatening villain the filmmakers would like us to believe in. There is tragedy in the story of McCarthy. He played a high-stakes political game and self-destructed in public. Why that sort of real human drama is completely missing from this film is beyond me.

There is no attempt to explain the real reason for anti-communist paranoia, and that makes the film historically unbalanced. The Clooney clan didn't know how to put the McCarthy era in context. Younger generations and the masses who don't read history will wonder what all the fuss was about. With tens of millions of people dying in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin paranoia was impossible to avoid. The horror of Stalin's party purges make the politics portrayed in this movie look like something from the Sunday comics.

OK, I get the idea that Clooney likes "smooth jazz" music. The music is great, and this, unfortunately, is also one of the films biggest problems. That music was not widely popular in the 1950's. The pop charts were full of light vocal and musical show tunes, and this would spell box office disaster today. The real pop music of the 1950's made the rise of Rock and Roll inevitable! A dramatic orchestral score could have heightened the impact and would not have drawn undue attention away from the story, as does the music in this film.

Controversy always has more than one side. If Clooney were a good filmmaker he would have given the film the type of dramatic tension that could turn it into serious entertainment. The unintentional paradox is that while presenting the story of a "neutral" journalist, Clooney shows a distorted view of the surrounding historical events. I guess it is just too bad for us that the real world is so out of touch with George Clooney.

Rarely when an actor tries to direct does it work, and when it does you get "character study" without all the supporting scaffold a real filmmaker would provide.

Clooney is a smart man who knows this. So he structures his projects in ways that are well serviced by what he has to give. The last one was an actor playing a character who created a character within. The structure of the thing was all focused on building and exploiting those ambiguities.

Especially clever were the staging devices. Many were novel and a few were particularly striking.

Now this is a more serious, but has the same values. It is after all a character study, and one that deals with these same two worlds. The man when off the camera, and the man on. Fabricated truth as an act by politicians. "Journalism" as way of piercing through those layers.

Two evils, McCarthy and Paley. Clooney's point is that control over the pipeline is what matters in delivering the "real." So he works with some very studied staging. This movie has some of the best staging in recent memory. It must have taken forever to set the angles and lighting. Fortunately these are so powerful that no scene needs more than two setups. This is the way this cinematographer works for PT Andersen too.

The switch in lighting from when Murrow is on the air to just after he goes off is rather thrilling: both are intense, in fact the on-air lighting is stark. But there is a powerful and visible shift from external to internal energy.

If you just saw the script as words on a page, it would seem boring and preachy. It is the staging that makes this thing come alive, that gives a container for the great acting. The only actor who seems off is McCarthy, which is telling.

I have the book Clooney's dad wrote about movies. Fortunately the son has better insights into what works and what doesn't, and has good intuitions about what to attempt.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.