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Rating:  - A GREAT movie. Thank you George Clooney for making this
I love the black and white.
I will forever respect George Clooney for funding, producing and directing a movie that centers on a TRUE American hero. A time when news and entertainment were separate divisions on network TV and their were great and courageous journalists. Not the "brainless", talking head, "soap opera" stars of TV.
Great, great acting and done in a realistic, adult way, where we can "feel" the tension and think to ourselves about what would we do if we were in the late great Edward R. Murrow's shows or the head of the CBS news department. He lets the story be the star and use the great subtlety of black and white and the actors and their interactions be the star.
Edward R. Murrow should be remembered with pride as an American who whose responsibility he felt to other American's who depended on him to be factual, truthful and present the truth was greater than his personal ambition. What a rare trait in this "I, I, I" world.
Jon
Rating:  - Clooney has chops
George Clooney has to be, if not the most talented guy in Hollywood, certainly the luckiest. A former Sexiest Man Alive, according to People magazine, scion of a wealthy show business clan, a tv star, a movie star, and now a successful director. His first film, Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, on wacky tv game show host Chuck Barris's fantasies, was a sober look at a mentally disturbed man, much better than highly lauded screenwriter and director Paul Schrader's similar Auto Focus, on tv star Bob Crane's descent into pornography. But, we've all seen this before- a big star thinks he can make films, makes a first film that is lauded- think Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood, and on and on, and then starts pumping out sheer dreck.
Well, scratch that with Clooney, who also wrote the film with his producer Grant Heslov. His latest film, Good Night, And Good Luck, which tracked CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow's 1953-1954 battle with Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom he belittles backhandedly as `the Junior Senator from Wisconsin', and his own network, deserved all the accolades it got in its Academy Award nomination. Of course, its nomination was for its political stance, and the relevance to the civil and human rights abuses going on today, in the failed War On Terror, but just because it got recognized for the wrong reasons does not mean it's not a worthy film.
What separates Clooney, in his first two films, from the above named actors, is that he is simply not content to tell a straightforward story. In both films he uses different filmic techniques, frames scenes in different ways- in this film letting the camera be a static fly on the wall, and generally shows that he knows what to do behind a camera, as well as in front of one. Several things show why this works. First off, Clooney and his cinematographer Robert Elswit (Magnolia) shoot the film in black and white, which always lends an `old', historic feel to a film. Secondly, he makes the audacious choice to use footage of the real Senator McCarthy and his victims, rather than using actors. In doing so, we see how truly deranged and maniacal McCarthy was. Latter day apologists try to insist he wasn't as bad as all that, and that there were real communists in the government.
This is all true, but they were never a threat, merely a convenient scapegoat, and McCarthy's many false accusations and smears allowed the handful of real threats to later get off by claiming McCarthyist tactics were used against them. McCarthy falsified records, lied, claimed he had proof he never revealed, harassed people, never produced their accusers, practiced cowardice in the name of patriotism, and tried to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (ala Guantanamo Bay). The Left, especially in Academia, has much to answer for in its support of Stalin and Mao, and their regimes which murdered manifold more people than the Nazis, but the average laborer/fellow traveler merely saw The Party as a refuge from the vile practices of Big Capitalism at its worst. To equate a few rabble rousers with a plot to enslave the nation is to blur all colors between black and white, and like trying to make the case that David Duke was as great a threat to world peace as Hitler. This was why a Communist sympathizer like Alger Hiss was found guilty and sent to jail on a technical perjury, barely related to the treasonous crimes Richard Nixon accused him of, and which history has exculpated him for, yet is viewed as if he passed on atomic secrets like Julius Rosenberg. And it was in this gross conflation and addle-minded simplification that we see that the true threat to freedom was in the lying, manipulating, and fulminating madness of McCarthy, amply captured on film, and nicely left undiluted by Clooney, so that `selective editing' charges are baseless.... The film just misses greatness because Clooney makes a few errors. First, he has a pointless side story about a married couple (Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson) at CBS that violate the company rule against married employees, then he has a subplot about a man, Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise), McCarthy drives to suicide (done in Martin Ritt's Woody Allen starring film The Front, with Zero Mostel's character), and finally the film's soundtrack is a bit weak, with a jazz score that seems inapt to the gravity of the situation. But, these are all minor demerits. The use of classic 1950s commercials and footage more than makes up for those weaknesses, and really gives a claustrophobic feel, at times, that only heightens the drama, the outcome of which, is known. Yet, this fact does not lessen the intensity because Clooney gives a great performance, and Strathairn, as Murrow, is simply brilliant. It is a testament to his brilliance (mostly unseen in small, independent films, such as those by John Sayles) that this great performance is almost routine in his canon.
Rating: - More Hollywood Rewriting of History
Although this movie was entertaining, it is a completely slanted version of history. America is in the dire condition it is in today because the media trashed, slandered and libeled the great Senator Joseph McCarthy and got away with it.
America is in the grip of global organized crime based on zionist philosophy and centered in Israel. If senator McCarthy had been able to rid the gov't of treasonous zionist criminals, the Kennedy's would never have been assassinated, and many atrocities like the Iraq war would not have become reality.
Rating: - Good product
Purchased this DVD as a gift for my husband. We have watched it twice and it is good quality. Would purchase from this vendor again.
Rating: - A DISTILLATION OF PURE McCARTHYISM and ITS ENEMIES
**WARNING** This review is full of plot spoilers!
GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK follows veteran CBS-TV journalist Edward R. Murrow from 1953, when he took the Air Force to task for denying a soldier a security clearance based on secret evidence and no counsel; to 1958 when he left CBS. Along the way Murrow and staff go after Joseph McCarthy and his accusations, but allow McCarthy time to respond on the air. McCarthy sent a letter which in no way denied anything CBS-TV or Murrow had reported, but laid on more and more name-calling. Murrow suffered this with grace and soon therafter, Congress investigated Senator McCarthy.
But there was a price to pay. Bill Paley, head of the network (the whole corporation, in fact), advised against airing the McCarthy episode, and the show's sponsor, ALCOA, dropped the show after the McCarthy episode aired. The vehicle for such investigation, Murrow's show SEE IT NOW, wound up in the Sunday cellar of broadcasting and increasingly Murrow had to deal with trivialities like interviewing Liberace. About the same time in 1958 that Murray was receiving professional accolades on his career, Mr. Paley let him go, or did not stop his trying to go, ostensibly for budgetary concerns.
This is a low-key but high-impact behind-the-scenes drama that plays out in semi-documentary style, using black and white and incorporating some of the actual shows and government hearings, which of course are digitally scrubbed copies of the original film or kinescope. Nice comedic relief is supplied by Dianne Reeves' jazz singing, which ironically comments on the action, and by the very real-feeling camaraderie among the actors playing CBS staffers.
George Clooney, director, gave himself a nice subordinate role as Fred Friendly, who was often stuck in the middle between Murrow's desires as a seeker of accurate news and Bill Paley's as a businessman. David Straithairn is wonderful as Murrow and looks a great deal like him. Frank Langela's take on Bill Paley is especially praiseworthy. We come to understand how Paley sympathized with Murrow but ultimately had to give in to real-life concerns, like finding advertisers. In other words this film is careful to present nuance and not tar all the journalists or all the capitalists with the same brush, quite unlike Joseph McCarthy's overheated and usually false accusations.
This is just one man's opinion, but IMHO this film would be a great thing to show in high school or college as part of a U.S. History, media history or even current-events class. The notions of secret judgments made by accuations in sealed envelopes and no resort to counsel is, sadly, still with us, as is a tendency on the part of some powerful people to impugn a citizen's patriotism rather than answer substantive questions.
As of this writing, the widescreen (recommended) DVD is quite cheap: under eight dollars. Thank you Amazon!
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