dtucker86 Review of The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald

The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald (1977 TV Movie)

Great revisionist history

[27 March 2008]

I have always been a JFK assassination buff and remember seeing this movie when it first premiered on ABC when I was nine years old. The people who made it owe no apology. How many of us have wondered what might have been if history had been different. In this movie, the question is what might have happened had the world's most infamous assassin not be murdered in Dallas. It REALLY would have been the trial of the century. Henry Wade was the district attorney in Dallas at the time. He prosecuted Jack Ruby and his name is on the famous Supreme Court abortion decision, but just think fate denied him the chance to be the greatest prosecutor in history! The man who convicted Oswald. This movie is so realistic that I had to keep reminding myself that this trial didn't actually happen. I guess this is the greatest compliment you can pay. It opens with Oswald in his specially built Hannibal Lector-like cell in the Dallas county jail sometime in 1964. The radio announcer says he has been on trial for his life for the last 43 and the jury has now retired. The jury then comes back and we see the world's press rushing to their phones and Oswald being handcuffed and taken back into the courtroom to hear his fate. It then flashes back to the events of November 21-22 1963. We see him trying to reconcile with his estranged wife Marina who has been staying with a friend and then the next day he is driven to work at the School Book Depository with a mysterious package in the back seat. Then America's darkest day happens, I wanted to point out that for 1977 the assassination reenactment is very graphic, there is just no explosion of blood at the head shot that killed Kennedy. Oswald leaves the Depository, murders officer Tippet (we are to infer) and then is arrested. It then flashes ahead to him being tranferred to the county jail where a flashbulb explodes and then the fantasy starts. Jack Ruby wasn't there and he is driven off. The rest of the movie details his trial with wiley, sarcastic prosecutor Ben Gazzara versus bombastic defense attorney Lorne Greene. Actually I think it would have been better if the roles had been reversed. I can't take TV's beloved Daddy Cartwright defending one of history's most infamous criminals. The trial is handled very well as I said earlier. Lots of courtroom theatrics (I object and such). Greene with Perry Mason ease demolishes several witnesses. That is the rather ridiculous part of the film. In one part Greene cross examines the witness who took Oswald to work and saw him carry a package he said contained curtain rods into the building. He has him carry a similar package that does contain curtain rods. It should be pointed out that in real life, the Dallas police went over the Book Depository with a fine tooth comb. They found the brown wrapping paper, but no curtain rods. It then flashes ahead to an assassination reenactment at the Depository itself, something they actually did in real life. Greene is scolded by the judge for telling the jury there "might" have been a gunman on that there grassy knoll. All throughout this fantasy, Oswald is as big a man of mystery as he was in reality. Scenes show him going to Russia and associating with sinister individuals. Was he a patsy, a conspirator or just a lone nut? Maybe SPOILER ALERT He clams up on the witness stand when Greene tries to get him to come clean and then erupts chillingly when Gazzara uses an unusual cross examination technique. Did Oswald decide to kill Kennedy because he felt Marina was attracted to him? Stranger theories have been proposed! SPOILER ALERT. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!! I am disappointed at the conclusion and think the filmmakers lost heart. Read these words backwards if you want to really know how it ends: alone ours is verdict final the and jury only the are we screen the on flashes it Ruby by shot then is he verdict the hear to led being is Oswald while conclusion the at.Despite this, it is a great film. Vincent Bugliosi, the Manson prosecutor recently wrote a massive study of the case and said that in real life ANY jury would have convicted Oswald and sentenced him to death. There was just too much evidence.