The Day Kennedy Died - ITV1 Documentary- By Jodie O'Neill

An account of events in Dallas surrounding President Kennedy's assassination on 22 November 1963. Featuring interviews with people who were there and rarely-seen archive footage. - https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/the-day-kennedy-died/series-1/episode-1-the-day-kennedy-died

This year is the 50th anniversary of John F Kennedy and I thought it would be interesting to research into ITV1's documentary which investigates into Kennedy's assignation. The documentary was aired on the Thursday 14th November 2013 and the duration was 1 hour 15 minutes. The narrator was Kevin Spacey. Spacey's vision was to “through the memories of those who played a part in the events”.


The documentary itself if of a expository and reflexive nature. The documentarian does not appear on screen throughout the whole episode but his voice overs are featured to address the audience to explain each factor of the visible footage, as well as keeping a strong sense of chronological continuity. The male voiceover usually takes place while archive footage is visible on screen. This helps to bring a sense of realism to the audience, as well as spreading the message of the documentary: that the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 was a key turning point in history.

The documentary can also be described as reflexive. Although the subject matter is factual, the content is presented in an emotional an expressive manner. However, unlike most reflexive documentaries, the documentarian does not have an "anti-realist" approach. The documentary does contain various viewpoints from the interviewees to what happened on Kennedy's last day and to what they think was the most significant moment, for example, the bodyguard for Jackie Kennedy described it as the "end of innocence."

The Telegraph Newspaper online criticised the documentary by commenting,

The language, too, could be clichéd at times, as Spacey talked about Kennedy, “the darling of the world’s media”, and his “glamorous style icon wife Jackie”.

However, later on in the article it praised the documentary by stating,

Yet the documentary sensibly navigated us away from conspiracy theories, sticking instead to providing commentary to accompany haunting archive footage of the President giving his very last speech less than four hours before he was shot.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10450381/The-Day-Kennedy-Died-ITV-review.html

The construction of the documentary is dominated by mid shots of interviewees and sources of rarely seen before archive footage. The use of voiceover helps to bring all these aspects together in order for the sequence to make sense. The selected archive footage has been carefully picked to supply a detailed and correct account to what exactly happened on the day that Kenned died, without addressing too many conspiracy theories. The documentarian is not visible at all, including the interview shots. Spacey himself does not directly ask the questions but allows the interviewees to express their views and personal accounts.