Black and White Segments.

I didn't like the switching back and forth. I think that the washout color of Saving Private Ryan, not the color shown on TV, the color used in the theater. Another method Spelberg used was in Shindler's List, he chose to use black and white because he felt the movie would be so full of blood, most people would have had trouble setting through it. Poinantly the only color thing he showed was the little girl's red coat running through the ghetto as it is being liquidated.

Being I was born after Kennedy's death, the film I identify with him with most was the Abraham Zapruder film, in color. I think it would have been better if the black and white scenes would have been restricted to news footage.

Antother film that switches this way is called Task Force(1949), it is black and white for most of the film but turns to color fur the final 18 minutes of the final battle scene and until the movie ends. It is one of those old movies that the never show then TCM gets it and shows if for about a year and then puts up for another 10 years. Good watch though, if you like history and aviation.

In his commentary, director Roger Donaldson says he was trying to convey a Life Magazine feel to certain segments (I wouldn't even call them scenes because they were so brief) in order to provide a sense of history, as if you were reading about the Kennedys in the press at the time.

I don't think he was successful, though. The whole film is supposed to be a "you are there" immersion into that particular time in history. These B & W interludes didn't seem any more historical or evocative of the era than any of the other scenes. The switches just seemed artificial; they take the viewer out of the immediacy of the story and make the viewer aware that he/she is watching a movie.