Imported Export

John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Day of Drums. The solemn hoopla attending this tribute to the late President reached its climax with an Easter Sunday opening in Manhattan, a bit of corny religiosity that would certainly have brought a derisive snort from Jack Kennedy. Made in 1964 by the United States Information Agency for showing abroad, the film became available for U.S. audiences by express congressional approval after enthusiastic press previewers launched a crusade extolling its virtues in terms usually reserved for such timeless Americana as the Gettysburg Address. Though Years of Lightning can now be seen by all, it is largely for the moviegoer who measures the magnitude of an experience by the size of the lump in his throat.

"No man could take away the years of lightning with a single day of drums," says Narrator Gregory Peck, as he eulogizes the authentic youth, vigor and intelligence of the Kennedy attack on half a dozen major issues. The Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress, the "conquest of space," civil rights, peace and freedom are the projects ticked off--sometimes in conventional shots of happy peasants and hopeful Negroes, more often in briskly edited footage of Kennedy's trips abroad. The President's motorcade in Mexico City is barely visible through a blizzard of red, white and blue confetti. In Dublin and Berlin, the running, grasping crowds give massive support to the making of an image. As violent contrast, the movie cuts with maudlin frequency to Kennedy's funeral preparations in Washington. Every sequence is anguishing, relentlessly focused on the ordeal of a benumbed young widow guiding her children through the protocol of official grief.

For contemplative Americans, Years of Lightning offers little more than an idealized shadow of the real J.F.K., a monochromatic coin likeness. His resilience, his zest for tough political infighting, his wild Irish humor are scarcely touched upon at all. His weaknesses are ignored or glossed over so swiftly and uncritically that the Bay of Pigs "setback" seems a mere preliminary bout for the Administration's sword's-point showdown over the dismantling of Soviet missile sites in Cuba. "There were those who disagreed with the President," says Peck. But they obviously don't matter very much. On the New Frontier, once unreliable U.S. rockets sail obediently into orbit. In the movie's oversimple view of Washington under Kennedy, intramural shoptalk and crackling press conferences disappear, for the city is "transformed into a cultural capital." In fact, this is neither Kennedy's Washington nor Washington's Kennedy. It is a legend for export, smoothly put together, fiercely partisan and as heedless of history as a love letter written in sand.

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