Good Night, and Good Luck  At the height of the Communist witch-hunts of fifties America, legendary CBS broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow decided to risk his reputation and his career to battle Senator Joseph McCarthy and expose him for the fear monger he was, live on air. The title is taken from Murrow’s sardonic on-air sign off. The contemporary relevance of Clooney’s second movie as director is obvious but it feels passionate rather than preachy. Shot in black-and-white, this powerful drama received many Oscar nominations. A clear example of great journalism shaping events.
Good Night, and Good Luck

         

Director:  George Clooney
Year:  2006
Length:  98 minutes
Country:  USA

Show times
Wed 13 September 2006 18:15
Wed 13 September 2006 20:45

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Review by Paul Arendt
Golly, would you look at all these gongs? George Clooney's recreation of the televised battle between journalist Edward Murrow (David Strathairn) and the fear-mongering senator Joseph McCarthy has been feted with so many awards and nominations that its narrow shoulders are quaking beneath such grandeur. Good Night, And Good Luck. is a clever, quietly spoken little movie and a great pleasure to watch. But it owes much of its success to the supreme relevance of its ideas.

Shot in luminous black and white and largely confined to the TV studios from which Murrow addressed the nation, Good Night is a labour of love for its director. Clooney is evidently crazy about the 50s: the style, the cigarettes (everyone smokes like mad) and the pervading sense that a handful of intelligent grown-ups can change the world. In this, it resembles Robert Redford's much underrated Quiz Show, another period piece that draws uncomfortable parallels between politics and television.

"FEELS STRETCHED"

In this case though, TV is the hero rather than the bogeyman, as Murrow and his journalist mates (among them Clooney himself, playing the memorably named Fred Friendly) challenge McCarthy's anti-Communist witchhunts in a series of increasingly brutal spoken editorials.

From BBC © bbc.co.uk