Good Night, and Good Luck

Today I saw Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney’s new film about 1950s TV newsman Edward R. Murrow and his exposure of Senator Joseph McCarthy as a fraud. Great film, shot in lush black and white. There’s not much action – much (though not all) of the movie consists of Murrow, played by the excellent David Strathairn, orating from his studio chair. But those scenes are mesmerizing.

This NPR broadcast by Walter Cronkite from last year summarizes the episode and includes some great audio clips of both Murrow and McCarthy. I wasn’t familiar with Murrow’s voice, but after seeing the movie and listening to that audio clip, I can say that Strathairn gets him down pat – his intonation, his pronunciation, his cadences. He should get an Oscar nomination for this.

Great, great movie.

6 thoughts on “Good Night, and Good Luck

  1. Oh cool! I’ve been dying to see that one and History of Violence. Seen that one yet? My co-worker movie fanatic saw 4 movies this weekend and actually Wallace and Gromit was his favorite. So I ‘ll be adding that one to the list too.

  2. I look forward to seeing it myself – on the wide screen or on DVD seeing I live in the (Australian) countryside!

  3. I LOVE David Strathairn. He’s so prolific and yet so few people know him by name. Do you remember him as Moss the librarian in The Days And Nights Of Molly Dodd? That was where I first saw him and he’ll always be Moss to me. (I think he would have been a great George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. )

  4. Strathairn also regularly shows up on stages here in New York. Just off the top of my head, I’ve seen him in two Roundabout productions, Lanford Wilson’s translation of Chekov’s THE THREE SISTERS at the old Criterion Center and a Pinter play called ASHES TO ASHES down at that theatre on 23rd Street they used for a couple of years.

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