George Clooney's deeply felt docudrama "Good Night, and Good Luck" provides a snapshot of the moment in history in which a major American television personality named Edward R. Murrow took on the malevolent power of a muckraking U.S. senator named Joseph McCarthy and won. Shot in black and white in a brisk "you are there" 90 minutes, the film, which screened in competition, lovingly re-creates the studios and backrooms of 1950s New York journalism at the CBS television network, where the men wore white shirts and dark suits, the women fetched the coffee and the morning papers and everybody smoked all the time. Clooney is the star name (as legendary producer Fred Friendly) in a fine ensemble cast featuring the previously unsung David Strathairn as Murrow, a career-defining role guaranteed to put him in the running for major awards.

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