Anchor steam

Good Night, and Good Luck prints the Murrow legend.

By Cheryl Eddy

AS GOOD NIGHT , and Good Luck opens, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) rips into an audience that has gathered to honor him at a 1958 Radio and Television News Directors Association gala. George Clooney (who also directs) and Grand Heslov's script stays true to Murrow's real-life speech, a searing indictment of television's shift toward fluffy programming, as well as the networks' increasingly close ties to advertisers.

"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate, yes. And it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful."

Were he alive today, Murrow would no doubt have additional thoughts about the 21st-century version of "this weapon," used to funnel eight bajillion channels of entertainment, infotainment, infomercials, and crime dramas into American homes. He'd probably take issue with the 24-hour-news culture, which favors sensational nuggets over in-depth stories. If he got a look at Fox News, he'd probably need a swig of Scotch just to make it to the next commercial.

In Good Night, Murrow's disdain for puff pieces is wryly illustrated by his celebrity interview show, Person to Person, which positions the hard-hitting journalist opposite sparkly subjects like Liberace. "Will you ever get married?" Strathairn-as-Murrow asks, and Mr. Showmanship responds via footage culled from the actual program. Clooney's decision to use real film clips, as well as pluck Murrow's on-air dialogue from transcripts, lends Good Night authenticity – which is augmented by an obsessive attention to vintage details, on-set participation by Murrow's former coworkers (including reporter Joe Wershba, portrayed in the film by Robert Downey Jr.), and Robert Elswit's crisp black-and-white photography.

While Good Night is a Murrow biopic of sorts, it avoids messing around with his hardscrabble childhood (and the reasons why he changed his first name from "Egbert"), focusing instead on the specific events surrounding March 9, 1954, when Murrow's See It Now program dared to take on Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare. Knowing that an unsubstantiated smear piece would leave Murrow and his staff, led by producer Fred Friendly (Clooney), vulnerable to attack, the group decides to expose McCarthy using only footage of the anti-Communist crusader in action.

Post-airing, Murrow feels the heat from cautious CBS honcho William Paley (Frank Langella), as well as from McCarthy (who, predictably, insinuates that Murrow has Commie ties). But it's a victory nonetheless, illustrated when Good Night puts its actors on pause to unfurl full-screen playback of McCarthy's hearings – in an effective echo of See It Now, the senator stars as himself – as the tide begins to turn against the witch hunt's most dedicated crusader.

Good Night rolls into release brandishing two Venice Film Festival awards: one for Strathairn's intense, intelligent performance, and another for Clooney and Heslov's script, which conveys Murrow's hero status without fabricating any big, Braveheart moments or sugarcoating his flaws (Murrow died of lung cancer in 1965, and it's easy to see why; in Good Night, he's never without a lit cigarette). Though Clooney's debut film, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, was likable enough, Good Night is a more accomplished effort from the glamorous director – the son of a broadcast journalist himself, and one of Hollywood's more politically outspoken stars.

The latter trait no doubt lured Clooney to Good Night, which offers historical perspective on a pair of themes that remain relevant. A fan of the ratings-grabbing $64,000 Question, Paley explains to Murrow why his show is having trouble finding a new sponsor: "People want entertainment, not a civics lesson." Cut to prime time in 2005, and Murrow's 1958 speech about programming being too influenced by advertisers, and viewers being "too complacent, indifferent, and insulated," doesn't sound off base.

Even more prescient is the atmosphere enveloping Murrow's feud with McCarthy: It was a time when national security issues could trump the rights of individuals, and fear kept most Americans silent. With good reason, Good Night is firm in its belief that change can only come when some brave soul sticks his or her neck out in the name of dissent.

'Good Night, and Good Luck' opens Fri/7 at the Embarcadero Center Cinema. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for showtimes.