Barry Forshaw

PHASE IV

Saul Bass, director/ 88 Films 4K

Discerning lovers of cinema will be familiar with the astonishing credit sequences designed by great Saul Bass, such as that for  Walk on the Wild Side with its prowling cat and wonderfully seductive jazz-inflected score by Elmer Bernstein. This was a classic case of Bass’s work being superior to the film that it introduced, but the designer was also associated with some ironclad classics, such as Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus and his work with Alfred Hitchcock, notably Psycho and North by Northwest. Saul Bass’s first feature film as a director, the science fiction thriller Phase IV, is a tense tale in which scientists at an Arizona desert station combat a terrifying attack by hyper- intelligent ants (normal-sized rather than gigantic as in such films as Gordon Douglas’s Them!). It goes without saying that the film looks amazing (how can something directed by Bass not be visually stunning?), but Phase IV also generates suspense along with its intelligently realised narrative.

BEN HUR, 4K 3-DISC SPECIAL EDITION

William Wyler, director/Warner

If ever a disc justified the expenditure of a 4K player, it’s this eye-popping transfer from one of the most famous of all epics, looking better than it has done since its original 1959 release. Of course, William Wyler’s Ben Hur was always a film designed to take the breath away with its 70 MM colour photography, surround sound, memorable performances (notably Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd), and a score by the master of dramatic orchestral music, Miklos Rosza. The fact that dialogue was by the British playwright Christopher Fry was another plus. Oh – and perhaps one should mention the chariot race? That remains one of the most heart-pounding sequences in the history of the cinema. Interestingly, William Wyler was one of the many assistant directors on the earlier 1925 version of the story, and the race here (in the capable hands of second unit director Yakima Canutt) pays homage to several of the key moments from the original film, sometimes shot for shot. Of course, the besetting sin of many epics of this era is the ever-present religiosity, but Wyler handles that aspect sensitively – although modern audiences may prefer the sceptical view of religion taken in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. But – back to that 4K iteration – the only problem might be that your television set is not big enough to do justice to the sprawling Ancient Roman canvas. The solution? Simple: along with your new 4K player, buy yourself a massive widescreen TV or – better yet – a projector and 7-foot screen. It will be like sitting through a showing of the film would have been decades ago. Ben Hur won a record 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director (Wyler), and Best Actor in a Leading Role (Heston). The film’s cast also includes Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Stephen Boyd, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott, Cathy O’Donnell, and Sam Jaffe. The new 4k box contains a cornucopia of extras.

Barry Forshaw