“Good night and good luck” was the sign-off given by Edward R Murrow, and it’s the title of an astonishingly good film directed by, and co-starring George Clooney which examines Murrow’s battle against the tyrant Joseph McCarthy.
Clooney plays Murrow’s produced Fred Friendly, but the real star of the show is undoubtedly David Strathairn as Murrow, who plays the role with a fine sense of understatement.
The film’s made in monochrome, and everybody’s smoking in just about every scene all the time. The music is muted, largely used to break up scenes, and the film is altogether finely crafted.
One could easily believe that it was another age when US networks genuinely cared about news ahead of profits, although even the supportive CBS is seen to moving Murrow out of primetime and into Sunday afternoons.
This film closed the London Film Festival tonight and I hope that it’s fantastically successful. I think I’ll get my order in for the DVD now.