Review of Good Night, and Good Luck
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Review Reviewed Work(s): Good Night, and Good Luck by George Clooney and Grant Heslov Review by: Ron Briley Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Dec., 2006), pp. 985-986 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4486594 Accessed: 04-10-2016 00:30 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Organization of American Historians, Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of American History This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Tue, 04 Oct 2016 00:30:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Movie Reviews 985 mented by eyewitness cBs newsman Edward R. Murrowtestimony (played in (including that of Walter Cronkite, stoic fashion by veteran character who actor Da- covered the trial as a young reporter); vid Strathairn) andexpert Wisconsin senator Josephcomment by legal scholars; explanations McCarthy to comment of on contemporary Jackson's pol- views and conduct by his iticsbiographer, in the age of terror. The liberal Clooney John Q. Barrett; audio and film excerpts contrasts the timidity of a fromcorporate media prosecution ar- guments; the testimony that failed to challenge the Georgeof W. witnesses, Bush and the cross-examination administration's of assumptionsG6ring. regarding weap- It is an interesting ons of mass destruction program in Iraq with the cour- to watch and conveys a good dealage Murrow andof his producer information. Fred Friendly Because it avoids hyperbole (George andClooney) displayed. spin even on aspects of the story that tend The film to evokes invitethe mood of the 1950sthem, it manages to sound both objective through ubiquitous swirling and cigarette accurate smoke, and can be used as an effective claustrophobic newsrooms teaching (there are no exte- tool. Because it touches, even riorif scenes sometimes in the film), stark black-and-white only briefly and indirectly, on a considerable cinematography, which allows the variety filmmakers of subjects, it can be used with to show historical profit footage of McCarthy,not and only a in courses dealing with the classic T-hird jazz soundtrack featuringReich Dianne orReeves World War II but also in others as a performer on in internationalthe style of Billie Holiday or history in the mid-twentieth Ella Fitzgerald. century. The ambiguity and paradox of The film closes thewith era are also theapparent instandard the film's conclu- assertion that the Nuremberg sion. Murrow trials plays a key role established in bringing Mc- the prin- ciple that wayward Carthy down, yetregimes the reporter's role at thecan net- be held ac- countable for their work is reduced actions by board chair William and Paley that persons engaged in criminal (Frank Langella), conduct who is concerned about under the them can be brought to international impact of political controversy on corporatejustice. It readily concedes that this sponsorship. expansion This astute film eschews theof sim- international law had no deterrent plicity of the liberaleffect. hero slaying theBut reaction- it fails to ana- ary dragon. lyze the actual consequences of what the tri- Good Night, and Good Luck (Murrow's sig- al created. International justice, it turns out, nature closing for each broadcast) begins with has been applied, as at Nuremberg, only to the losers in war. For Murrow's that speech at a reason,1958 network tribute. the threat of it But rather than indulging in self-congratu- reinforces the need of rogue regimes to avoid latory heroism, Murrow delivers a jeremiad, defeat by any means, however odious. Terror- warning the industry of television's potential ist acts, genocide, and even wars of aggression to amuse and insulate the public rather than may find their justification illuminate the truth. One wonders what in Mur- that assumed ne- cessity. And those acts in turn create a plausible row would think of today's media empires in rationale for preemptive wars. Replacing ven- which a reporter from Fox News becomes a geance with justice has not made the world a spokesperson for the White House and reality safer place-at least not yet. television dominates prime time. Manfred MurrowJonas then reminisces about his confron- Union College tation with McCarthy, which began with an Schenectady, New York investigation into the case of Milo Radulovic, who was forced out of the U.S. Air Force due Good Night, and Good Luck. Dir. by George to allegations about the possibly Communist Clooney. Prod. by Grant Heslov. Warner In- politics of his father and sister. Asserting that dependent Pictures, 2005. 93 mins. action based on unsubstantiated charges was a danger to American democracy, Murrow de- In Good Night, and Good Luck, director nounced McCarthy in a March 9, 1954, See George Clooney and screenwriter Grant Hes- It Now broadcast. About a month later, Mc- lov employ the 1954 confrontation between Carthy replied, casting aspersions on Murrow's This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Tue, 04 Oct 2016 00:30:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 986 The Journal of American History December 2006 patriotism by asserting that he would Las Vegas: not An beUnconventional History. Dir. intimidated by "Murrow, the Daily byWorker, Stephen Ives.or Prod. by Stephen Ives and the Communist Party." The dialogue Amanda between Pollak. Insignia Films, 2005. 180 Strathairn as Murrow and the McCarthy mins. (PBS foot- Video, 1320 Braddock Place, Al- age is effective, as in reality the two exandria, men VAcar- 22314; 800-531-4727; http:// ried on their discourse via television www.shoppbs.org/)and were not in a room together. McCarthy's public de- mise is then captured in documentary Las Vegas,coverage Nevada, has long been a canvas for American neuroses. This is an old habit for of his exchange with Joseph Welch in televised army hearings. Americans, a well-worn attitude to the city The film introduces several subplots that beganwith when Las Vegas was exotic, de- mixed success. An amusing conversation lectable, delicious,be- tawdry, and anything else tween Murrow and Liberace (appearing the visiting via file writers and filmmakers (whom the footage) on the Person to Person show, locals callwhich "carpetbaggers") could think of to Murrow insisted that he hosted only call theto "paycity. They came prepared to see the the bills," includes a comment from city the and pia-its people in a certain way, and in a nist that he was looking for the perfect place devoted mate to illusion, it is not hard to find and that Princess Margaret was "looking what you for came looking for. her dream man too." The extent to which Stephen Mc- Ives's Las Vegas: An Unconvention- Carthyism could destroy an individual al History is well sadly falls into that generations-old documented in the suicide of the news com- trap. There is nothing unconventional about mentator Don Hewitt (Grant Heslov), who this film. It recapitulates every cliche about the was hounded by the right-wing columnist Jack city. The film could have been made by the Travel Channel. Ives is a lesson in and of him- O'Brien of the Hearst press. But the story of Joe (Robert Downey Jr.) and Shirley Wershba self. He brought to the project an East Coast (Patricia Clarkson), who lose their jobs in the sensibility, which led it astray from the begin- newsroom because they violated corporate pol- ning. He and his staff had an ahistorical vi- sion of the city in their minds from the start, icy regarding marriage between employees, is and that skewed image led to one indefensible somewhat of a distraction. That "coming out" choice after another. almost appears to be an allegorical commen- Unlike other episodes in the American Ex- tary on the topic of gay marriage, detracting perience series, Las Vegas tosses aside historians from the major political discourse of the film. in favor of faux experts who simply mirror the Murrow's message, which Clooney wants filmmaker's sensibility. People who do not un- to emphasize, is best captured in the reporter's comment that "one cannot defend freedom derstand Las Vegas and its complicated his- tory serve as narrators; those who really know abroad by deserting it at home." Any doubts something get bit parts. We endure the film about the film's connections with the present critic David Thomson and the architectural are dispelled in the film's closing shot. Mur- critic Paul Goldberger giving us history with- row and Friendly stroll by a television moni- out context. Nicholas Pileggi repeats the same tor on which President Dwight D. Eisenhower fictions, told him by Lefty Rosenthal, that is speaking about the necessity of maintaining make the movie Casino (1995) such a good such basic freedoms as habeas corpus. As the story but such bad history. The continuity nar- screen fades to black, the viewer is left with vis- rator, Mark Cooper, looks like a stereotype of a ions of Guantanamo Bay and detentions fol- Las Vegas lounge lizard; he gives us his person- lowing 9/11. Good Night, and Good Luck is al outsider's view, the result of visiting the city open to charges of presentism, but in the final repeatedly since he was a child.