An observational film looking at the comings and goings of London's Waterloo railway station..
John Schlesinger
Edgar Anstey
Ken Higgins
COMMENTWritten and directed by John Schlesinger, Terminus is truly observational in style, but because it contains some careful 'set-ups' to aid the story, it can't really be called 'fly-on-the-wall'. It is set in London's Waterloo railway station and the idea is that we are unseen observers watching the unfolding of a day in the life of the station. The famous scene of the lost and frightened little boy who is eventually reunited with his mother probably won Schlesinger his Oscar, but the film weaves together many other lively narratives that come and go on the station platforms, from the bee keeper on the roof of the station to the departure of troop trains. These are edited together as overlapping and parallel events. In some ways the commentary-less film is rooted in earlier 'mass observation' documentary classics like Listen to Britain, but it also points forward to the anthropological 'actuality' television documentaries of the seventies and eighties.
