JFK - Dallas crime scene
JFK - Tatort Dallas (original title JFK ) is an American drama from 1991 directed by Oliver Stone . It tells the attempt of the District Attorney of New Orleans , Jim Garrison , played by Kevin Costner , to uncover the exact circumstances of the assassination of the US President John F. Kennedy in the year 1963. The film is based on the books by Jim Garrison and Jim Marrs , according to which Lee Harvey Oswald was not a lone perpetrator, but only the cog in a widespread conspiracy of the deep state against the president.
action
The viewer is in 1963 on the day of the assassination attempt on John F. Kennedy . First, a brief look back at the years before Kennedy became president. Then the Zapruder film shot on Super 8 can be seen, which is the only film showing the Kennedy assassination from just over 20 meters away. When the shots are fired, the scene changes to New Orleans , where Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is the district attorney. First, all of Oswald's contacts in New Orleans are checked and finally the investigation is discontinued.
Three years later, in 1966, Garrison reopened the case with his investigators. Garrison goes into great detail on numerous clues, the clarification of which on the one hand seems to complete the puzzle and on the other hand raises a number of new questions. But you get a much better picture of what happened then and why. “Who killed Kennedy? Who benefited from it ? Who has the power to cover up such a crime? Who?"; “Oswald, Ruby , Cuba, the Mafia , that's what people are doing, and no one thinks of asking why!” In addition, companies and their economic backgrounds are questioned and references to the Vietnam War are made. The decisive factor is a longer sequence in which “Mr. X “Garrison says, among other things:
“What has the defense budget been like since the war began? 75 billion dollars (1966), soon it will be 100 billion - by the time the war is over it will be almost 200 billion; In 1949 it was 10 billion. If there is no war, there is no money. The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is to make war. A state's authority over its citizens lies in its power to wage war. And Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term. "
At the end of the film, Garrison leads a criminal case against Clay Shaw / Clay Bertrand (Tommy Lee Jones) on charges of conspiracy to murder the president . He illustrates how improbable the path of the “Magic Ball” was and shows the public for the first time the film by Abraham Zapruder, which was previously in the TimeLife building in New York. You learn a lot of details and Garrison puts everything in a meaningful context, closed by a rambling plea about political morality. In the end, he fails to convince the jury of Shaw's guilt, and Shaw is acquitted.
Background and conspiracy theories
Oliver Stone's film stands in the tradition of numerous different theories that assume a conspiracy behind the murder of former US President John F. Kennedy , the first of which emerged after a few hours and even more after the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby .
The allegation of an only superficial official investigation of the murder by the Warren Commission , which ultimately determined Oswald's sole perpetrator, but hardly pursued other theories , certainly contributed to this . A possible reason for this was the concern that a more in-depth investigation would uncover involvement of the Cuban government or the Soviet secret service, which could have resulted in a new world war. Shortly after the attack, the Soviet Union was on high alert, as it was feared that they would be held responsible for the attack.
The film itself deals with the investigation of the New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison into the assassination attempt on the US President John F. Kennedy , who had pushed through a new judicial investigation in March 1967 due to inconsistencies in the official report of the Warren commission, with which he wanted to prove that President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy involving pilot David Ferrie and businessman Clay Shaw , among others .
This is one of many conspiracy theories for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in which the CIA is held responsible for this. In addition, there are no less popular theories in which the Soviet secret service , Fidel Castro , Lyndon B. Johnson , Cubans in exile , political right-wing groups or the American mafia , which Kennedy was strongly fought against, and with the family members of the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald himself had contact in parts, should have caused the murder.
Criticism of the theses and theory-finding of Stone
Many critics of the film accuse Stone of having pursued theories by already approaching the film with the thesis of a political conspiracy, and then using the facts to build his story of a murder plot in favor of the highest possible suspense, instead of neutral and impartial To approach the facts and to consider possible personal reasons for the act.
Indeed, to this day, despite countless new, both state and private investigations, Oswald's sole perpetrator thesis has not been invalidated, nor has the participation of any interest group been proven according to the standards applicable in court.
Among other things, the so-called "single bullet theory" is questioned in the film, according to which President Kennedy and Governor John Connally were hit by the same bullet, as well as the official view that the third and ultimately fatal headshot of the President from behind Fired towards the Dallas School Book Depository . Instead, this third shot from the front is said to have come from the direction of the hill called Grassy Knoll by conspiracy theorists , which, among other things, the "Head Snap" seen in the Abraham Zapruder film is supposed to prove. This is the fact that President Kennedy's head was not thrown forwards, as might be expected, after the fatal hit, but to the left rear and that his head, at the upper end of the forehead, i.e. in front, opposite the direction of the School Book Depository burst open. This should prove that the headshot must have come from the direction of Grassy Knoll.
However, this thesis contradicts firm ballistic principles, as demonstrated by the respected ballistician Lucien Haag at the end of September 2013 at the annual meeting of the National Association of Forensic Scientists .
First, the fact that Kennedy's head split open in the front shows that the shot came from behind, since an exit wound is always larger than an entry wound. Accordingly, the bursting of the forehead on the front, above the right ear, shows how the projectile leaves the skull again. In addition, the thesis about the head snap is based on the false basic assumption that when a bullet from a firearm hits an object, it is strongly thrown back on impact according to the principle of the conservation of momentum . However, that people hit by a bullet are knocked over or even fly through the air, is a widespread misconception that is suggested by corresponding representations in several action films. In fact, if a moving body meets another at rest, it can set it in motion, but only if both have a reasonably equal mass, e.g. B. the shot put pendulum . However, this does not apply if a projectile weighing a few grams hits a person's body or even their head, which is still much too heavy. Accordingly, the acceleration of the car during the last third shot and the sloping road to the left as well as the posture of the president already inclined to the left to his wife should be responsible for the direction of the head falling backwards, against the direction of travel, according to the principle of inertia , or a final boom of the muscles in the body, in the form of a sudden reflex in which the President's hunched back stretched out again, causing the limp head to fall back at the same time.
Furthermore, the digitized, high-resolution versions of the Orville Nix film and the Marie Muchmore film, which show the assassination from behind, with a view of Grassy Knoll, show how a fine, red fog, presumably existing, is formed during the fatal headshot of blood, brain matter and parts of the skull, pushes from the President's forehead forward in the direction of travel, at the same moment the car overtakes him and finally descends on the rear of the car, whereupon Jackie Kennedy climbs onto it to shock the parts of her head Man's collection. The funnel-shaped alignment of this nebula towards the front can also be seen on the Abraham Zapruder images used in the film (between frames 310 and 313).
In addition, the expert on guns injuries Larry Sturdivan noted in a reconstruction of the attack in 2011 for the National Geographic station that when a shot from the direction of the Grassy Knoll on the head of the President, Jackie Kennedy , who was sitting to the left of the President (accordingly in Line of fire), from shrapnel, or at least the car should have been slightly damaged at this point. In addition, the car's windshield was damaged from the inside, which can only be explained if the shots were fired from behind. This also speaks against the fact that the last shot hit the president from the front.
In addition, the assertion made in the film that Lee Harvey Oswald , who in the summer of 1963 had already carried out a failed assassination attempt on the former US general and right-wing radical Edwin Anderson Walker with the same rifle with which he shot President Kennedy in November, is one been a miserable shooter, not the facts. During his basic training in the US Army, he just missed the required shooting performance with the M1 Garand , which would have classified him as a "sharpshooter" (the middle of a total of three levels in the American system for qualified shooters). However, three years later he came up with a worse result on another check, that of a "Marksman" (one step below Sharpshooter). However, these results still show him to be an above-average shooter.
The film also addresses the famous backyard pictures in which Oswald poses in the garden of his house with his rifle in hand and a pistol as well as with communist newspapers, and it is assumed that these are fakes. In fact, Oswald's widow, Mariana Oswald, has stated several times that she took the pictures herself. In addition, the US professor of computer science Hany Farid came to the conclusion in his examination of the images in 2009 that it was "highly unlikely that anyone could have done such a perfect forgery with the technology that was available in 1963".
Furthermore, the Carcano carbine, which Oswald used for the assassination attempt, is referred to as a cheap rifle in the film , which suggests that it was too imprecise for the assassination attempt. In fact, Oswald had bought the rifle for a low price, as the demand for Italian rifles was very low after the war, but the Mannlicher-Carcano is an average rifle that was used in various designs by the Italian army for over 40 years, was used during the First and Second World Wars and was also used by snipers.
In the film, like Garrison in reality, the thesis is put forward that there were six shots at the president. Even most supporters of a conspiracy assume only three shots. There is also a controversy about the DictaBelt sound recording, on which a fourth shot can be heard. Furthermore, statements from witnesses are taken up who stated that they had heard shots from the direction of the Grassy Knoll . Ultimately, statements were included according to which gunpowder vapor rose on the Grassy Knoll or men ran away with guns. However, the correctness of these statements could never be proven or confirmed despite the many photographs and film recordings made during the assassination or based on other evidence. Instead, this observation is explained by the phenomenon of attention blindness, according to which the brain misinterprets or overinterprets small things in extremely stressful and chaotic situations due to overstimulation. Even experienced shooters are not always able to correctly reproduce the number of shots or the direction of the shot under stress.
synchronization
The German synchronization was for a dialogue book of Matthias Müntefering under the dialogue director of Michael Richter on behalf of Berliner Synchron AG .
Reviews
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“28 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Oliver Stone ('Platoon') is touching the collective conscience of a nation that has never fully recovered from the shock of the assassination. After months of research, he gathered evidence to present his version of the events in a three-hour tour de force. With a furious fireworks display of cuts and the montage of authentic and own film material (two Oscars were the reward), Stone provides pure excitement in this political thriller par excellence. Superstar Kevin Costner leads a cast that is second to none. 2.9 million cinema viewers let themselves be carried away by the flood of images. "
“The film is a committed and engaging combination of documentary and dramatization that corroborates doubts about the official results of the investigation and the integrity of the state organs commissioned with it, even if one does not always want to follow the conclusions it draws from it. Even for non-American viewers, an exciting film as well as a frustrating historical lesson. "
“[...] while the authentic Garrison appears to Stone like an invented figure, the fictional images of the assassination shot with a Kennedy double appear disturbingly 'real': coarse-grained, fuzzy, seconds-short sham documents, fictions of truth that make the difference between reality and blur the staging in a virtuoso and unscrupulous manner. "
“Oliver Stone's film is an animal with three heads. Since he does not want to forego the weight of real names and certified facts, he lacks the closed tension, the playful, malicious brilliance of Verneuil's Kennedy thriller " I for Icarus ". For a docudrama, on the other hand, the evidence is still thin. "
The Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the production the title “particularly valuable”.
Anecdotes
- Critics accused the director of polemicizing and manipulating the viewer by mixing historical facts and fictional events . Stone then released a source-cited version of the script to meet criticism.
- Jim Garrison has a guest appearance in the film: He plays Earl Warren , who was once chairman of the Warren Commission that was set up to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In this cameo he quotes Earl Warren that there is no evidence that the Warren Commission's result can be refuted and that Oswald was the sole assassin on John F. Kennedy - and thus "contradicts" himself 24 years later.
Film music
Because of his extensive engagements for Steven Spielberg's Hook , which was created during the same period as JFK - Tatort Dallas , the composer John Williams could not compose the score for the entire film as usual due to lack of time. Instead, he composed six musical sequences before he'd even seen the full-length film. Shortly after the recording and recording of these sequences, he traveled to the New Orleans location, where director Oliver Stone was still working on the completion of the film. Williams watched about an hour of the material that had already been filmed to get his own first impression of the atmosphere of the film. After Williams had composed and recorded other parts of the film music in addition to the sequences that had already been recorded, Stone and his team actually cut the film to match the music.
Awards
Academy Award
In 1992 the film won two Academy Awards.
- Best editing on Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia
- Best Cinematography by Robert Richardson
Other Oscar nominations:
- Best movie
- Best director
- Best adapted script
- Best Supporting Actor ( Tommy Lee Jones )
- Best film score
- Best tone
Oliver Stone was nominated in three categories at the same time, but won no award.
Golden Globe Award
Oliver Stone was awarded the Globe in the Best Director category for his individual performance as a director .
Other Golden Globe nominations:
- Best film / drama
- Best Actor / Drama ( Kevin Costner )
- Best film script
Like at the Oscars, Oliver Stone was nominated in three categories at the same time.
Japanese Academy Award
In 1993 the film won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. After Platoon , JFK was the second Oliver Stone film to win this award.
British Academy Film Award
Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
Further
The film was nominated for three Political Film Society Awards in 1991 .
literature
- Jim Garrison : Who Shot John F. Kennedy? On the trail of the Dallas killers. The book for the film (Original title: On the trail of the assassins ). German by Uwe Anton, edited by Heike Rosbach. Bastei-Verlag Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1992, 411 pages, ISBN 3-404-13412-5
- Jim Marrs : Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy
Web links
- JFK - Tatort Dallas in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- JFK - Crime Scene Dallas in the online movie database
- JFK - Dallas crime scene atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK, by Dave Reitzes (English)
- Comparison of the cut versions German dubbing - English original sound , theatrical version - Director's Cut by JFK - Tatort Dallas at Schnittberichte.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://jfkassassination.net/russ/infojfk/jfk6/traj.htm
- ↑ arte - The JFK murder, unrolled
- ↑ Mafia. US shadow history. 1989, Chapter 21 and 22
- ↑ The Kennedy Assassination. The end of the conspiracy theories. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 21, 2013, accessed on March 26, 2016.
- ↑ CSI - Forensics for Dummies
- ↑ Preclinical Traumatology . Page 24
- ↑ JFK Assasination - The complete Orville Nix film. In: Youtube from April 17, 2010, accessed on June 25, 2017.
- ↑ JFK Assasination - Marie Muchmore film. In: Youtube from October 13, 2013, accessed on June 25, 2017.
- ^ Larry J. Sabato: The Kennedy Half-Century. The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy . Bloomsbury, New York 2013, p. 209.
- ↑ a b JFK - The secret of the third ball . Documentation from National Geographic
- ^ Dale K. Myers: The Shot That Missed JFK: A New Forensic Study . May 5, 2015, accessed March 26, 2016.
- ^ John K. Lattimer: Lincoln and Kennedy. Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations . Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego 1980, pp. 217 ff.
- ↑ Alan Peppard: Before gunning for JFK Oswald targeted ex-gen. Edwin A. Walker and missed. In: dallasnews.com May 12, 2013, accessed March 26, 2016.
- ^ A b William Cran, Ben Loeterman: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswals? In: Frontline , accessed on March 26, 2016 (English).
- ^ Dorian Hayes: Oswald, Lee Harvey. In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara / Denver / London 2003, Volume 2, p. 566; Vincent Bugliosi: Four Days in November. The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy . WW Norton, New York 2007, pp. 286 f.
- ^ Warren Commission Report, Chapter 4: The Assassin, Oswald's Marine Training , accessed March 26, 2016.
- ^ Gerald Posner: Case Closed. Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK . Random House, New York 1993, pp. 107-109.
- ↑ Dartmouth Professor finds that iconic Oswald photo was not faked ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Dartmouth College press release November 5, 2009, accessed March 26, 2016.
- ↑ Christopher Schrader: The human stain. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 13, 2009.
- ↑ American Rifleman TV: I Have This Old Gun — Italian Carcano Rifle
- ↑ Vincent Bugliosi: Four Days in November. The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy . WW Norton, New York 2007, pp. 121-143 and 162-171
- ↑ a b JFK - crime scene Dallas. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on May 1, 2016 .
- ↑ a b JFK (1991). Rotten Tomatoes , accessed May 1, 2016 .
- ↑ a b The Invisible Woman. Metacritic , accessed May 1, 2016 .
- ^ JFK - Tatort Dallas (1991). IMDb , accessed May 1, 2016 .
- ↑ JFK - Dallas crime scene. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Andreas Kilb : Abraham's Truth , in: The time of January 24, 1992, accessed online on November 12, 2013
- ^ Matthias Matussek : The trace of the regicide , in: Der Spiegel No. 51/1991, accessed online on November 12, 2013
- ↑ 'Hook,' 'JFK' are Latest Hits with the John Williams Touch (1992) . In: The Boston Globe, January 19, 1992. Retrieved October 14, 2013.
