Good Night and Good Luck is a film that attempts to show us what happened during the time of the red scarce brought on by Senator McCarthy. The film itself uses different cinematic techniques to make the film feel as though it was made in 1953 as well as incorporating different forms of symbolism.
The most obvious technique is the fact that the movie is in black and white. The lack of color allows the audience to imagine as if they were watching the events of the red scare as it was happening in 1953. It adds a realistic yet fictional aspect to the film. The lack of color also shows that the situation with the communist was also black and white. It was clear that what McCarthy was doing is wrong, yet no one had the courage to stand up to him because they feared retaliation.
Another key technique are the constant close ups with the many characters. The close-ups allow Murrow, the newscaster, to be more intimate with the viewers. It creates a more intense and personal atmosphere throughout the movie because the red scare was a serious matter that endangered many innocent lives. The close-ups also showed that Murrow was taking the situation very personal even though he never really admitted it.
A subtle element of the film is that all the shots of the movie was made inside never outside in the open. Symbolically it shows that the communist threat was affecting people’s personal lives within there home and not just the outside world. The mere assumption that a person was affiliated with the communist party does not ruin just the individual’s life but the lives of his family as well.
There was a concerted effort after WWII to demonize the Soviet Union. I certainly would not have wanted to live in a country whose leader systematically murdered millions and millions of his own countrymen; McCarthy did not start the scare, he just heightened its paranoia. Good comment about how the scare was having an effect of people in their homes where they should have felt safe.
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