It’s hard not to think of Vertigo when the ants’ language is transformed into sinuous geometric shapes on a monitor, and then suddenly the face of one protagonist is illuminated in red. Through this anti-narrative use of graphic elements and colours, Saul Bass made his mark as a director with his only feature-length film, Phase IV. An intellectual and ecological science-fiction piece, this film sits among the epigones of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Following cosmic events that scientists are unable to explain, ants on an Arizona plateau begin to act strangely: different species meet up and communicate together. The two scientists sent to investigate find themselves besieged by these tiny adversaries in their high-tech laboratory.
The influence of Kubrick’s masterpiece is evident, not only in the monolith-like towers built by the ants but especially in the film’s speculative nature, driven largely by voiceover commentary. Another clear inspiration is The Hellstrom Chronicle (Walon Green, 1971), a film about human-insect relations that won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and which involved Ken Middleham, who was brought in to Phase IV to replicate the photography of the ant sequences. The film opens with over five memorable minutes showcasing the ants getting organised in their underground tunnels, suggesting the earth already belongs to them and not to the two humans who arrive in this desolate, alien landscape greeted by an ironic sign reading “Paradise City”.
Unlike science-fiction horror films such as Them! or Tarantula, where the danger comes from gigantic insects, the ants in Phase IV remain true to scale. The sense of impending danger is amplified through the mise-en-scène: camera angles and depths of field distorting proportions, mosaic point-of-view shots of the insects and unsettling sound effects accompanying their swarming. Paramount, however, might have been thinking of those 1950s examples when it cut Bass’s original ending, the film’s experimental peak: a psychedelic montage of superimposed images, silhouettes, extreme close-ups, Magritte-like landscapes and man-animal fusion. “Phase IV” (after the three phases dividing the film) is finally here: let the new humanity begin.

Alice Autelitano