Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

 For a long time, I said that they cut out the swath of the Zapruder film in which JFK was shot in the back and rode down the hill that way. But, they finessed it. They didn't just cut it out in one piece. They did it in increments. They did cut out the actual hit. But then, they jumped through the descent of the hill, putting his hand over his face. They also moved up and enlarged the very distracting freeway sign, such that it gives the impression that he reached the sign smiling and waving, and that everything happened behind the sign.  If you look closely at the final work, you can see that he's not OK and Jackie is concerned, since she's looking at him. But, nobody noticed, and it all went down as though he reached the sign smiling and waving. 

But, that editing took a lot of time and finesse. They had to settle for something much more crude on November 29 for LIFE magazine.  

So, what they did was just axe out the swath by connecting frame 160 to frame 213; thereby bypassing the back shot completely. Here it is:

That's a big jump, but what's genius about it, and certainly not an accident, is that they did it at the binding between the two pages. The bunching up of the paper, causing that dip, seems to explain it and makes it acceptable- to the eye and to the mind. You can see that the sign is higher on the right. You can see that the wall is different. That is definitely a jump cut, as we say in the movie biz. But, it isn't objectionable, and it bypassed the whole back shot and its sequela.  

That's 53 frames removed, and at the time, it was a lot more than that. Ultimately, they did it incrementally, with a snip here, a snip there- whatever they could get away with and preserve the visual continuity. Who knows how long it took them. It may have taken years. 

The Zapruder film was shown to the public in 1975, but prior to that, starting in 1973, they "sold" it back to the Zapruder family for $1. They didn't actually give it to them. It remained with the National Archives. And the Zapruders found out later how much they really owned it when they demanded it back. Ultimately, through arbitration, they settled on a price of $18 million for it. 

But, the original Zapruder film showed Kennedy being shot in the back and then riding down the hill being transformed into the freak/zombie we see on the other side of the freeway sign.   But, kudos to them for using the paper binding to connect two very disparate frames and sell it to the eye and mind. They took that back shot right out of there and played us all for fools.