Le ciel de lit

The year was 1952. My parents had a date with another couple to see The Four Poster. I don't remember why they decided to take me. When the other couple got into my parents' car they were shocked to see me there. This movie contains adult dialogue - it is no movie for an 11 year old, they complained. My mother's response impressed me: "Either my daughter will understand or she won't. Either way is fine." The result, of course, was that I strained to listen to every word that was uttered by either Rex Harrison or Lilli Palmer, hoping against hope to hear the naughty implications. But darn it, it all sounded innocent to me. Whatever it was that the other couple thought I shouldn't hear, I hadn't!! But despite my youth, I found the movie interesting and well-acted and have never forgotten the images of Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer discussing their marriage while standing next to their four poster bed.

The Four Poster (TFP) is a little known and hard to find film produced by Stanley Kramer early in his career, which was made before he became a more successful movie producer-director. It is based on a play by Jan de Hartog, that was released in the same year that Kramer gave us his celebrated Western masterpiece High Noon. TFP actually exists in three versions: the play as originally presented in London; the film which is based on the London production; and the substantially revised play which later appeared on Broadway while this film was being made.

TFP is a two character story that in eight linked episodes traces the marriage of Abby and John from their wedding night to old age and death. Each episode takes place just in a bedroom, and follows the couple as they adjust to the many problems of married life, having and raising two children, trying to achieve personal and financial success, dealing with infidelity and reconciliation, passing through the many joys and tragedies that are encountered on the road to maturity and decline, and learning to accept the meaning of love and death when in the twilight of life. The London and film versions presented all of this as a rather serious story, while the Broadway version (that starred the married couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy) was changed to emphasize a more comical tone in the proceedings------and thus avoided the sentimental and mystical references that characterized the other two versions. In addition, the film starred a different real life married couple (Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer). They appeared to be a more glamorous pair than the seemingly commonplace duo of Cronyn and Tandy-----whose projected ordinary lives many thought were quite similar to those of the folks who came to see the Broadway version. However, it must also be mentioned that Tandy originated the role of Blanche Du Boise on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire------and that could hardly be considered as something commonplace.

TFP is one of those plays that probably could never have been made into a financially successful motion picture. The action (such as there is) was quite limited, the physical setting was almost claustrophobic and the marital scenes were so typical and repetitious that they had difficulty sustaining the relatively short film to its inevitable conclusion. What might have worked on the stage with its obviously artificial surroundings became somewhat anachronistic in the more realistic cinematic medium.

What ultimately saved TFP (the film) was its clever use of animation as bridges between the eight episodes. These cartoon segments were able to incorporate changes in time and place that could not be presented in the film because of its structure.

In the end, TFP as a work of art is probably best enjoyed in a theatrical setting with all of its artifices intact. There the ups and downs of married life with Abby and John would likely be most appreciated by an interested audience.

In this filmed version of Jan De Hartog's play, Rex Harrison and wife Lilli Palmer go through life in half a dozen scenes in their bed room. It starts with them newly married, and goes through their hardships, from inveigling a virgin bride into consummation, through death.

Harrison and Miss Palmer were husband and wife when they made this, and it neatly compresses the joy and heartache that a couple goes through. It was later the basis of the Broadway show, I DO, I DO, and Miss Palmer is radiant... and producer Stanley Kramer was taking an awful risk, since Harrison had left Hollywood in disgrace a few years earlier. Always-ambitious director Irving Reis pulls fine performances from his to performers, while the play is opened up by careful camera movement by DP Hal Mohr, and UPA cartoons about the world surrounding the two acting as scene changes. For some reason, they look like they were based on Ronald Searle's cartoons.

I saw this movie as a very young man. I saw it only once. And I've never forgotten it. It represents, to me, a template of life that speaks of all the joy and all the sorrow of life and of all the reasons that it is worth living.

If this movie were to be made available, it is one that I would gladly add to my private library and feel priviledged to be able to share it again.

Who was Jan de Hartog? Whoever he was, he wrote a splendid, perceptive, entertaining play, "The Four Poster," which was a Broadway hit with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy (how I'd have loved to have seen them in it), and, during that run from 1951 to 1953, was filmed and released by Stanley Kramer. Two-character plays were rare then, and two-character movies rarer still, but this one survives quite beautifully, preserving de Hartog's clear-eyed, comprehensive views on marriage, ego, womanhood, and creativity. The husband, played a bit stiffly to my eye by Rex Harrison, is a self-centered writer who nonetheless shows great sensitivity to his wife when it's required, and the wife, played beautifully by Lilli Palmer, is a searching individual whose identity is tied up almost exclusively in her marriage. The real-life marriage of this couple was, as other posters have noted, fraught, and the tension plays well into their characterizations. It's cleverly augmented by John Hubley's animated transitional sequences, which are rather brilliantly scored by Dmitri Tiomkin. Musical theater fans will know that the piece was successfully turned into "I Do! I Do!", and they'll be intrigued by the changes librettist Tom Jones made (the characters' names, the somewhat happier ending). I'd tried to track this one down for years and am glad to have finally seen it. It's unique. And it works.