Strong documentary on the drinking driver

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33653, 1 October 1974, Page 4

Strong documentary on the drinking driver

With last night’s tele- < vision screening of the 40minute New Zealand film tentatively entitled “479,” the Ministry of Transport has opened its most ambitious public relations programme.

The object of this exercise, which will extend until the end of January, is to change the attitude of the New Zealand community towards the drinking driver. Previous campaigns have met varying degrees of success. These and the limitation of maximum speeds have tended for the time being to hold the accident-rate below predicted levels.

One disquieting factor remains. Analysis of accidents indicates that the taking of alcohol is widely involved. Our t community tends to accept drinking immediately before driving as part of our New Zealand way of life—something to be tolerated and even admired.

The Transport Department has thus taken on its most difficult task—to change that public attitude to one of disapproval and even disgust. The idea is to persuade the public that, far from being an example of “good sportsmanship”—a “belonging” act —drinking-driving is an antisocial practice. The film we saw last night will have affected many people in different ways. This was the intention of those responsible for its production. It is not a heavyhanded “teaching” film, with a repetitive moral, as in oldstyle semi-documentaries. Indeed. it appeals to more, subtle psychological reasoning.

The simple story gains substance by being based in a recognisable (Greater Auckland) area. The circumstances are only too feasible —a “good-fellow” drinker (he had to be a salesman!) is persuaded to have “one more,” is dazzled by approaching lights when

driving home, crosses the centre-line —and causes a fatal accident. WORKMANLIKE The actors do a workmanlike job, without noticeably overspelling their parts. Richard Poore, as the inivoluntary villain, handles a i complicated part with the ‘finesse of his London experience, and at the same time does a tolerable job of : remastering the New Zealand ; language. In his brief visit home ; after 14 years in London, Richard Poore also made a few television commercials, so that his face is not exactly unknown to us. It will not surprise if some confused viewers, seeing the commercials later, find themselves debating the propriety of allowing a young man with such a bad accident record to sell insurance! The writer, Wayne Toureli, has worked out a nice contrast between the family groups involved—on the one hand Peter (Richard Poore) and his wife Jennifer (Fiona Fitzroy); on the other the “average family man” Jim Kershaw (Ken Blackburn), his wife Pauline (Brenda Simmons) and their teen-age daughter Susan (Jenny Brochett).

I thought the long-term results of the accident were well worked-out to tell their own story of community responsibility. Kershaw, left an embittered widower, with the additional burden of a daughter doomed to a vegetable-like existence in hospital; Peter, remorseful and unhappy, but with no other handicap than a suspended licence and a shift to office-work during the term of the suspension. To assess the impact of the film is a more difficult task. The viewer would be apt to develop a strong feeling of social injustice. It is just “not fair” for the Kershaw family to have suffered so much. On the other hand, we are surrounded by similar

instances in real life, and we still have drinking drivers. The film emphasises realism, but there is a “tomato-sauce” look about the injuries. The scene in the hotel bar before the accident, ‘seemed to me a little forced :—not, for example, in the catagory of the bar scenes lin the “Pukemanu” series. Peter’s realisation that he was having “a little too I much” did not come through. ‘The stone-faced looks of the other patrons did not quite i come off as evidence of i drunkenness. IMPRESSIVE But the end result was impressive. The traffic authorities have an effective, up-to-the moment film, complete even with theme music, “A Better Way," by Shade Smith. To those who may think the film could have been more savage it is necessary to explain that it is only part of a carefully-planned advertising campaign. The press advertisements still to come will emphasise the folly of treating the drinking driver as some kind of a hero-figure.

Press advertisements will feature the basher and the child-molester, and will pose the question: are these worse than the drinking driver whose carelessness maims a child? The analogy is made between road deaths and battle-casualties. The unknown factor in this campaign is the effect it will have on the case-hardened New Zealand character. Most of us have become inured to shock and violence, and community ways are hard to change What is different this time is the appeal-factor. The authorities are asking us directly to be concerned, and to treat the situation as one in which we are personally involved — as the accident-lists show we are.

Already this year there have been signs, however small, of a public revulsion against the road toll. In feeding this, the campaign may well prove to be the stimulus we wanted.—C.M.

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