When you have to document one of the emotional events in the history of the 20th Century, you come here to this one film. United Press International got together with several other sources to cement what has now become the Case Closed legend of the shooting of JFK.The footage here of JFK's last appearances and of the funeral with Jackie and Bobby are really very well put together. Richard Basehart, (Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea on television) is a solid person for narrating this one. There are a lot of facts presented here in a logical fashion which document an event that is finally starting to fade from America's scene this many years later.There is some surprising footage in this account but nothing that would be controversial at all. A lot of footage of the fateful landing at Love Field and the procession to JFK's fate has those of us who remember this day still emotional.More people cried and more people were saddened by this event because of the fact that there we 3 TV Networks who basically for all the days through the funeral broadcast nothing else really dominated television like no other event in history. The live murder of Oswald on TV is here, Osswald's Funeral, even some trace outline of Ruby's Kit Kat Club in Dallas make the cut. Without a doubt, this films proves this is perhaps the most documented event in US History, it even out did Lincoln's shooting which has a huge amount of history documented in the 19th Century. As this event fades into History, and the last sealed records are opened, it is far too late to ever get a better version of this event than this film presents.

Powerful document of the four days in November of 1963 that haunt our nation to this day. Telling in how it shows a grief stricken nation mourning a fallen hero that led America out of the brink of war and tried to be a force in civil rights, Richard Basehart's matter of fact narration seemed fitting to take us through the opening highs of that charismatic personality and charming smile that JFK exuded while on tour through Texas (Houston and Ft Worth before Dallas) to the tragic, horrible lows of his assassination and funeral ceremony as family, diplomats, friends, politicians, and the citizens of a country trying to make sense of it all achingly pray and sorrow. Details knitted together from real footage and some recreated occurrences involving Lee Harvey Oswald, from witness accounts, take us into four days that shocked and traumatized a nation and world. The funereal festivities involving JFK as his coffin eventually made its way to Arlington cemetery is heartbreaking...it just shouldn't have happened. It feels like you are reliving it all as Basehart accounts for what he symbolized and left behind. Gone far too soon...and he would not be the last national tragedy in the 60s to be taken before he should have.

Four Days in November (1964) *** (out of 4) Oscar-nominated documentary taking a look at the four days in November where the country changed forever. I've watch dozens of documentaries on Kennedy and several just this past week on the 50th Anniversary of the president's assassination. I was rather late coming to see this popular film and even though I've seen quite a few there was still countless bits of footage that I had never seen before. I think what really makes this documentary stand apart is that it was made less than a year after the assassination so needless to say there's all sorts of footage that just typically doesn't get shown today. I think some of the most interesting moments deal with the moments right after the assassination when people were just hanging on to see whether or not the president was going to survive his wounds. The aftermath of course is another thing and it's interesting to note that hints of a conspiracy theory on displayed here and a couple of them would later be used in Oliver Stone's JFK. There's no doubt that history buffs will want to check this thing out because there's simply so much news footage that you really get a great idea of what it was like, television wise, when this happened. I will say that the film feels a tad bit long when watched today and it's also a bit too dry and at times lingers on. Still, there's no question that all the news footage makes this one worth checking out.

The title of this essay above is an apt description for the film FOUR DAYS IN November. For this film was a chronicle of four of the darkest days in American history.And those four days were between November 23-26, 1963 which started on the 23rd at 12:30 PM, Dallas Time when President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dealey Plaza as his motorcade approached the Texas School Book Depository and ended with the burial of President Kennedy on the 26th. And in between those events, we see history rapidly unfolding. First the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit by Lee Harvey Oswald; his eventual capture in a movie theater; and his eventual murder at the hands of Jack Ruby two days later. During that time, we also see the hastily arranged inauguration of President Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One; the preparations for the funeral of the slain President; and the day of the funeral which ended with President Kennedy's final journey to Arlington Cemetery for burial and the lighting of an Eternal Flame by his widow. All the while, we see the reactions to the events from a stunned America and a stunned world.By using news footage from both local and international sources, director Mel Stuart made a documentary that is still as compelling today as it was back in 1964. Even watching it half a century after the events, one can still feel the immediacy of those turbulent four days and still feel the sense of loss and shock that occurred on that fall day in Dallas. Shocks that still reverberate to this day, even to those who weren't born until after those Four Days in November.