The JFK Image: Profiles in Docudrama Raluca Lucia Cimpean. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

The JFK Image: Profiles in Docudrama Raluca Lucia C impean. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.A key figure in numerous fiction films, documentaries, and docudramas, the image of the thirty-fifth president of the United States has been portrayed in a variety of ways. An entry in Rowman & Littlefield's recently launched Film and History series, Raluca Lucia Cimpean's The JFK Image: Profiles in Docudrama addresses this "story of an image, of its coalescence, reflection, and/or refraction" (ix), specifically the JFK image in the overlooked genre of the docudrama. She defines features of the docudrama in her introduction, differentiating the docudrama from the documentary and-less convincingly-from the historical film. Melodrama is also a key feature of the docudrama, as it remains the "docudramatic mode of dramatization," and such films will often incorporate archival material to fit the melodramatic framework. Cimpean grounds her work in narrative theory, Bill Nichols's documentary theory, Hayden White's theory of historical representation, and Murray Smith's work on identification.In the first part of the book, Cimpean delineates the three general approaches to how Pres. Kennedy was remembered by historians, as it would shape the later docudramas: the New Frontier, Camelot, and "Camelot-Inside-Out." As Cimpean clarifies, "The New Frontier had been optimistic, bold, dashing, future oriented; Camelot was skeptical, reverential, subdued, and past recuperative" (59). This Camelot period was marked by the hagiography that arose after the assassination and the cult following Jacqueline Kennedy's "Camelot" interview in Life. This last stage, "Post-Camelot," arose in later decades through the revisionist and iconoclastic literature, one that questioned JFK's status as family man as well as his foreign policy. Much of the historical context the author surveys in the opening chapters may be familiar (although the author's investigation into the circumstances surrounding the accounts of the PT-109 incident is an added bonus), but the author's focus on how contemporary journalists and historians discussed Kennedy's presidential leadership and postassassination legacy proves enlightening, particularly as to how it relates to JFK's portrayal in film and television today.The second half of the book examines the films under discussion, divided into three categories: "The Kennedy Leadership" {PT 109 [1963], Thirteen Days [2000]), "The Kennedy Assassination" {Executive Action [1973], JFK [1991], Interview with the Assassin [2002]), and "Kennedy Nostalgia" {In the Line of Fire [1993], Nixon [1995], The Rat Pack [1998], The Path to War [2002]). These "Kennedy Nostalgia" films are, in keeping with Kennedy docudramas in general, more in the vein of New Frontier and Camelot. While the films range from the obvious {PT 109, the docudrama par excellence Thirteen Days) to the less so {The Rat Pack), the inclusion of the mock documentary Interview with the Assassin is perhaps the most perplexing, particularly since the author contrasts the differing characteristics of mock documentaries and docudramas. …