The Death of a President - Fifty Years On

The assassination of President John F Kennedy happened 50 years ago, more than half a life time in the past. Yet ‘The Day President Kennedy Died’ (ITV) made that fateful day seem shockingly contemporary. Narrated by Kevin Spacey, the documentary interweaved eye witness interviews with some amazing footage; the events of those 48 hours (if you include the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby) resonate to this day. If the President’s car hadn’t been open-top, if they it had been raining the roof would have been down, if not Dallas at that time and that moment…so many ifs leading to time’s arrow and that moment when shots were fired by Oswald or Oswald and/or others (we can never really know). The testimonies of the Secret Service Agents, Doctors, Reporters and Witnesses were absolutely riveting as was the footage of Kennedy’s last day. Not only was JFK the first TV President, he was also, tragically, the first TV assassination – though no TV coverage comes close to the hand-held Zaprudder footage. The documentary leaned towards, but never pandered to, the conspiracy view of the shooting. One was left asking could Oswald really have had the wherewithal acting alone to kill the President of the United States? There’s also the feeling of what might have been had John F Kennedy not been killed on that sunny November; would he have been the greatest reforming figure since FDR (as hypothesised by Oliver stone)? Or would Kennedy been no better or no worse than LBJ in Vietnam and on the Home Front? A superb documentary about an epochal moment in American History.