This summer, a groundbreaking Logie-winning documentary turns 50 – yet its message still hits hard. Curator Simon Smith explores how You Just Don’t Realise... exposed the devastating toll of serious road accidents in Australia, a reality as urgent today as it was in 1975.
Content warning: the clips in this article contain graphic scenes that may disturb some viewers.
In December 1975, ATV-0 Melbourne broadcast a graphic documentary designed to confront complacent audiences in the lead-up to Christmas. You Just Don’t Realise… was a searing 55-minute examination on the effects of the mounting road toll. Written and produced by station journalist Phil De Montignie, the film contained shocking scenes of car accident aftermaths and featured interviews with culpable drivers in prison and the damaged survivors of serious road trauma. Audiences and critics took note. ‘ATV-0 has produced a shocker on the road toll’, declared a reviewer in The Age. ‘It hopes the screening will save lives during the critical Christmas period. The motor car accident, a daily occurrence … is the number one killer in the community.’
The timing was right. In the same month, the Ted Mulry Gang’s Oz Rock anthem ‘Jump in My Car’ ascended to the top of the Australian pop charts. The introduction of colour TV broadcasting earlier in 1975 only heightened the special’s visceral impact. Filmed over three months, Terry Carlyon and Barry Thomas’ unflinching lenses captured bloodied and bewildered road victims on 16mm colour film stock. ‘I have never seen anything so horrifyingly gruesome on a television or cinema screen’, exclaimed TV columnist Ralph Broom in The Sun.
In the film’s opening sequence, De Montignie warns viewers of the confronting nature of what they’re about to see, followed by a litany of sobering statistics and an accident scene with a car skewered by a pole:
Excerpt from You Just Don't Realise..., written and produced by Phil De Montignie, 1975. Courtesy: Network Ten.
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After its premiere on 18 December 1975, in the AO (Adults-Only) 8.30 pm timeslot, Channel 0 repeated the documentary the next night and again the following Monday. TV Week noted that the ATV-0 switchboard received 500 calls: ‘497 commended it – [only] three said it was too harsh, ruthless and cynical’. The Canberra Times later reported that police considered the special ‘the most disturbing film yet made on road accidents’.
You Just Don’t Realise... uses statistics to make a compelling case that many of these devastating accidents are entirely preventable, and often the result of substance abuse or complacent seatbelt use. This sequence highlights the role of excessive alcohol consumption by young males:
Excerpt from You Just Don't Realise..., written and produced by Phil De Montignie, 1975. Courtesy: Network Ten.
Some of the more graphic vision had never been seen before on Australian television. In a stomach-churning three-minute sequence, a coroner at the Melbourne morgue takes the viewer through an autopsy of a road fatality. Another shattering segment features children who sustained severe brain injuries in road accidents and ‘will never go to school again’.
The documentary doesn’t spare the culpable drivers. In this clip, 30-year-old ‘Graham’ reflects from prison on the life-changing impact of driving while drunk:
Excerpt from You Just Don't Realise..., written and produced by Phil De Montignie, 1975. Courtesy: Network Ten.
Three months after its initial broadcast, De Montignie found himself on stage at the 1976 TV Week Logie Awards receiving the award for ‘Best Single Documentary’, while host Bert Newton and overseas guests Lee Marvin, Henry ‘The Fonz’ Winkler (Happy Days) and Gordon Jackson (Upstairs Downstairs) looked on. De Montignie fondly recalled Marvin praising him for thanking his crew in his acceptance speech, a credit often missed by directors in the thrill of the moment.
The win boosted the credibility of ATV-0's news and current affairs journalism. The award, along with Logies for Best Australian Drama (Number 96) and Best Variety/Musical Show (Young Talent Time), highlighted that the 0-10 Network was fast becoming a major player in the new colour television era.
Success at the Logies led to further screenings around the country, including in Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra, Perth and non-metropolitan regions. Wherever it was shown, viewer feedback was profound. ‘The reaction to You Just Don’t Realise… was staggering’, according to SAS-10 Adelaide program manager John Trost. It received ‘well over 200 phone calls, when by comparison, we received 12 when we launched Number 96 and 8 for The Box – there’s your gauge.’
In this sequence at the Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Centre, a nurse details the devastating physical and emotional effects of an accident on 18-year-old ‘Julie’:
Excerpt from You Just Don't Realise..., written and produced by Phil De Montignie, 1975. Courtesy: Network Ten.
You Just Don’t Realise... was a defining career moment for Phil De Montignie. No stranger to tackling the hard stories, he had previously fronted ATV-0 investigative current affairs program Dateline (1970–72) and won a Penguin Award for his 1973 Eyewitness News production A City Gone Mad on the 1923 Melbourne police strike. De Montignie departed the 0-10 Network in 1978 to pursue a career as a film producer and independent documentary filmmaker.
Through his productions, De Montignie explored the re-enactment of a 1939 Australian inland expedition (The Madigan Line, 1978), champion race driver Allan Moffatt’s initial attempt at the world’s most infamous endurance car race (24 Hours at Le Mans, 1980), the music of Turkish refugees living in Greece (Rembetika, 1983), and Australian eye surgeons operating in the Solomon Islands (Curim Sickness Belong Eye, 1985).
Network Ten sold You Just Don’t Realise… to police departments and interest groups to raise road safety awareness. It remained a driver education training tool for Victorian and South Australian police into the 1990s and, according to De Montignie, is still screened today.
In his 2015 Oral History interview for the NFSA, De Montignie reflected, ‘the more you see it, you just think “I had no idea” [of the unseen impacts] … That’s why it’s called You Just Don’t Realise..., because you just don’t realise how far reaching the effect of the road toll has [been].’
The NFSA preserves both the original two-inch broadcast video master and 16mm film components of You Just Don’t Realise…
With thanks to Phil De Montignie, John Fife and Network Ten.
Main image: Frame capture from You Just Don’t Realise..., 1975. Courtesy: Network Ten. NFSA title: 32686
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