of 1954 and at an address given by Murrow in 1958.
The whole process of movie making is ill equipped to handle the story that the reviewer, a nit picker in my opinion, wants handled which would then cover about 10 years and include a lot of extraneous material. I understood the movie to be about the confrontation between Murrow and McCarthy. Certainly I have mentioned most of those things that the reviewer considers important in my posts and so I don't feel the need to reply to them.
But an important point may be glossed over that appears in the Washington Post article, and that is
"the phony posturing of Senator Joseph McCarthy aside." In other words the reviewer embraces one of the points of the movie which was that McCarthy was a grand-standing blow hard with not a shred of evidence, who never found a Communist anywhere, and almost certainly couldn't have found one even had someone had given him a road map.
The other point of the movie is the famous line quoted by Murrow rebuking the gullibility of the American people, and its governors. "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves." Wm. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
Rob
and Good Luck here. Watched it on DVD last night, and really enjoyed it, though it portrays a dark episode in US post war history.
It covers a few months in early 1953 (we didn't get our television til Christmas that year) and is wonderfully evocative in black and white, since that's how we used to see everything on the tube anyway.
Unfortunately it comes in on Welch's speech, the attorney for the US Army, just after he makes one of the great assaults in Senate history. When one of Welch's firms younger attorneys is attacked by McCarthy as a member of a Communist organization (allegation like so many made by McCarthy untrue, and unfounded) Welch asks "Where did you get this information?" McCarthy waffles and says its not important where he got the informantion but Welch continues "Well did you get it from an informant and if so who is that informant? McCarthy continues to waffle, and says no it didn't come from an informant. Welch then asks "Well, did it come from a Pixie?" McCarthy looks both baffled and amused and asks what a Pixie is, while Roy Cohn tries to stop him from pursuing the issue, Welch replies "Well Senator, I think I would describe a Pixie as a second cousin to a fairy!" at which the smile falls from McCarthy's face, and Roy Cohn, the object of the comment, looks completely stunned. From that point on we move into the better known territory of Welch explaining that the young man had come to him and had said he belonged to a Lawyers League which McCarthy and nobody else had named as a Communist Front Organization. After that we get to the "Have you no shame, Senator, Have you at long last lost all traces of decency" speech which many of us know nearly by heart.
And yes Bobby Kennedy is visible in a couple of shots sitting at the end of the hearing table.
Murrow himself lost his program almost immediately after the interview, and the relationship, once very close, between Murrow and Wm Paley the head of CBS never recovered though Murrow remanined VP as head of the News Division.
I think its a terrific movie, and deserves a viewing for its content, and another for the commentary track which explains why George Clooney made (and co-wrote) the movie (his dad was a newsman during this period).
Rob
-- but such movies should be dismissed for any historical value and viewed as pure entertainment at best.
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