Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

"History will pick up its cold pen and book, and write in chronological order the events of the day with the date and time and the city. But history will be wrong, for there wasn't one date, or time, or city."

So intones Gregory Peck in that marvellously stern voice of his as he narrates Bruce Herschensohn's documentary film JFK: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums (1966). Thanks to the U.S. Consulate General in Munich and a.m.s. art management, this rare work was screened last night to mark the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. The anniversary remains heartbreaking. Truly, a day for tears.

The film covers the remarkable 1,000 days of the Kennedy Administration. Along with domestic highlights such as his White House speech to the first Peace Corps volunteers, the Civil Rights crisis and the space race, there are the dramatic international moments: the Cuban crisis, Berlin crisis — "if war begins, it begins in Moscow, not Berlin" — his journey to Costa Rica, his speech at the Berlin Wall and his visit to the Kennedy ancestral home in Ireland. Interspersed between these segments are poignant scenes from the 1963 funeral. The sense of grief and hope lost is palpable.

By virtue of a combination of factors: youth, virility, looks, charm, humour? Kennedy was different from those who preceded him. His tragic death helped make him different from all who succeeded him. You can replace a man but you can't replace a myth, and Bruce Herschensohn's film was part of the process that made John F. Kennedy a myth.

Although the Internet Movie Database doesn't have a poster for the film, I did find one at Movieposterbiz, a site that specialises in vintage movie poster (Note: you may be asked to install VML). Interestingly, it's a Japanese poster that features a collage of (a stylised) Kennedy in life and on his way to his appointment with death in Dallas.

Diarist of the day: Queen Victoria, 23 November 1896

"After tea went to the Red drawing-room, where so-called 'animated pictures' were shown off, including the groups taken in September at Balmoral. It is a very wonderful process, representing people, their movements and actions as if they were alive."