7 /10 1 Votes
3.7/5 Mubi Director John Schlesinger Music director Ron Grainer | 6.7/10 Letterboxd Initial release 1 April 1961 Screenplay John Schlesinger Producer Edgar Anstey | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Awards BAFTA Award for Best Short Film, Lion of San Marco for Best Documentary Similar The Innocent, A Kind of Loving, An Englishman Abroad, Honky Tonk Freeway, Madame Sousatzka | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Terminus is a 1961 British Transport Film documentary (filmed in August, 1960) directed by John Schlesinger which presents a "fly-on-the-wall" look at an ordinary day at Waterloo station in London. Along with most British Transport Films, it was produced by Edgar Anstey. It was nominated for a BAFTA Film Award for Best Documentary and, for a time, the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, before being disqualified after it was discovered that the film was first released prior to the eligibility period. Original music was by Ron Grainer.
In fact, many of the supposedly 'reportage' shots were staged. Schlesinger makes a cameo appearance as a passing, umbrella-carrying business man, and a tearful and apparently lost child, Matthew Perry, was temporarily abandoned deliberately by his mother Margaret, an actress relative of Schlesinger. Some other people appearing were also actors, including handcuffed convicts and a confused elderly woman.
