The day the earth became a cemetery!
Ernest Hubbs, an English biologist, observes a disturbance in the behavior of ants in a valley in Arizona. Once-conflicting species are beginning to communicate with each other, while their usual predators are ominously disappearing. The professor recruits the scientist JR Lesko, a specialist in language, to study this curious phenomenon. What they will soon observe on the spot is beyond comprehension...
Released in 1974, Phase IV is the only feature film by the famous American graphic designer Saul Bass, author of the legendary credits of films by Otto Preminger and Alfred Hitchcock. In this dystopian story which evokes as much 2001, a space odyssey as The Birds , the director manages to raise the anxiety with an economy of means, favoring the frame and the staging over special effects. Straddling thriller, documentary and ecological fable, teeming with inventive visual ideas, Phase IV is an extraordinary film object to be discovered for the first time on Blu-ray and DVD in its restored version!
PHASE IV by Saul Bass
(1974 - Colors -83 mn - VOST + VF)
New HD Restoration
SUPPLEMENTS
. AN ANT'S LIFE* (21 mn)
A work of hybrid science fiction close to experimentation, a precursor to today's cosmic horror films, Phase IV remains inseparable from its production context: the 1970s. An interview with Jasper Sharp and Sean Hogan.
. ORIGINAL END OF SAUL BASS* (18 mn)
Unpublished, the end of the film as initially imagined by Saul Bass.
. THE SHORT FILM ''BASS ON TITLES''
(1977 – Colors – 34 mins)
In 1977, renouncing for a time the design of film credits, Bass takes stock of his contribution to this activity which he helped to ennoble. In Bass on Titles , he reviews his main successes to better assert himself as a director in his own right.
. ORIGINAL TRAILER
* In HD only in the Blu-ray edition
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BD 50 • HIGH DEFINITION MASTER • 1080/23.98p • AVC ENCODING
Original Version / French Version DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 • French Subtitles • 1.85 format respected • Colors • Length of Film: 83 mins
DVD 9 • NEW RESTORED MASTER • PAL • MPEG-2 ENCODING • Original Version / French Version Dolby Digital 1.0 • French Subtitles • 1.85 format respected • 16/9 4/3 compatible • Colors • Length of Film: 80 mins
Released June 17, 2020
