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The Kennedy Assassination, as Filmed From Different Angles

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Today, November 22, marks the 45th anniversary of the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That the tragedy in Dallas' Dealey Plaza would go on to inspire an entire subcategory of film is perhaps not much of a surprise -- especially when you consider the quantity of footage and stills that survive from photographers and witnesses who followed the motorcade, not to mention the most famous of them all, Abraham Zapruder's 8mm home video.

Although countless TV specials and documentaries have explored the events leading up to that world-altering moment -- and plenty of movies hinge on other political conspiracies (Vantage Point, The Parallax View) -- only four feature films have incorporated the actual incident into their storyline. Each of these movies unfolds the mystery from a different angle, and each brings something different to how we think about a crime that still shakes us.

JFK (1991): Oliver Stone's depiction is probably the best known of the bunch. Told from the point of view of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), JFK focuses on his investigation into perceived inaccuracies in the Warren Report -- and the ensuing prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones). The movie raised a ruckus -- even while it was still filming -- and led to 1992's Assassination Records Collection Act, which compiled evidence related to the assassination for public examination.

Executive Action (1973): Here the story is told from the conspirators' point of view, including Burt Lancaster as a black ops specialist. This time, it's a cabal of industrial, political and intelligence leaders behind the assassination. The first movie to present an alternative to the Warren Report, it reopened the debate as to exactly what happened on the grassy knoll -- and fed the public's fascination with it.

Ruby (1992): Starring Danny Aiello, Ruby focuses on Jack Ruby, the man who shot Kennedy assassin Lee Harvy Oswald. More fiction than fact, this movie depicts Ruby as a man who was motivated to act in order to expose a Mob and CIA conspiracy.

In the Line of Fire (1993): While not precisely about the assassination, Clint Eastwood's Secret Service agent character, Frank Horrigan, is introduced as the only still-active member of the security detail on duty in Dallas that fateful day. His residual feelings of helplessness are in part what drives him to stop another would-be assassin (John Malkovich).

You can decide for yourself what's fact and what's fiction -- or share your own theories below.

For a complete schedule of JFK on AMC, click here.

Posted by AMCtv.com
November 22, 2008 12:01am


Comments

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By maryb on November 23, 2008 12:21 AM

45 years is a long time. President Kennedy was 46 when he was murdered. Add 46 and 45.

I get anxious when I view a movie like Stone's 'JFK.'

A good yarn - but the physical and historical records do not support the movie theme at all.

I can look at the 'Godfather' as a movie - and I think it is wonderful. But I can be distressed that people think - to this day- that people think this is a true chronicle of power and crime in the US in the 20th century.

If you believe movies - one could think that Bonnie and Clyde were heroes not cold-blooded murderers, which they were.

Confusing creative play - such as the film JFK does - or to transmute the willful murder of John Kennedy by Oswald to a story of conspiracy among the agents and agencies of the US or USSR or Cuban governments all the way up to Lyndon Johnson does not serve art or history.

It is just another awful tragedy.

In future- AMC - run the movie - but don't run the movie on the date-occasions - November 22 anytime.

Respectfully,

MB


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By camille on June 12, 2010 3:38 AM

I really want to watch this. I'm curious about the assassination of one of America's best presidents.
Boiler Grants

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By dofu on January 20, 2011 7:00 AM

For the past several weeks my research into the globalization movement took a strange left turn, and shed light on some rather odd connections to the JFK assassination I hadn’t considered before.

Jim Garrison’s investigation lead him from Oswald’s connections to anti-Castro groups to a former CIA agent by the name of Clay Shaw, who was funding the intelligence agency financed movement through his World Trade Mart. Shaw was a member of the board of directors of a shadowy corporation called “Permindex”, which had also been implicated in the assassination attempt of Charles de Gaulle. When Garrison subpoenaed Shaw, the first person Shaw called was one Fred Lee Crisman, a former OSS agent and self proclaimed “disruptor agent.” One of Crisman’s close friends was Michael Riconosciuto, an employee of Wackenhut who would later become the informant of the deceased journalist Danny Casalaro, who was investigating a conspiratorial group known as the “Octopus”, which he said was “spawned in the era of the Cold War”. Wackenhut today does work for Halliburton in Iraq, and Halliburton was named as a principal financer of Permindex. Furthermore, a research who investigated Casalaro’s claims after he died traced the “Octopus”, which Wackenhut is a part of, to a board of directors of a corporation called FIDCO. The vice president of this company was Robert Maheau, a CIA/FBI agent who acted a go between the Hughes Corporation and the Mafia in funding the CIA-based anti-Castro movement, of which Oswald can be tied to another Ginault ad production.Ginault makes mid level fine Swiss watches. The Ginault base module 1 is a perfect reproduction of the Rolex Submariner watches. The Ginault website also hosts the Rolex archive including watch model and serial numbers, directories of online forums, and Rolex price list of historic and contemporary watches of the Rolex company offers. Another FIDCO director was Clint Murchinson, who had notable anti-Kennedy sentiments, was connected to twas a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover, and was a financer of the American Nazi Party. In Oswald’s address book was the phone number of the American Nazi Party. So given the ties to Wackenhut, Crisman’s phone call to Shaw would make sense, since they seem to run in the same gray area of collusion between Big Business, Organized, and the US government and its intelligence agencies.