Bedtime Story

Judith Davidsen -- Interior Design, 3/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

On the movie screens of 1999, a group of actors took turns visiting the inside of John Malkovich's head. Now, as perhaps a sort of revenge, he shows up on the ceilings of no fewer than three rooms at Ateliers Jean Nouvel's Hotel Lucerne in Switzerland—doing some very sexy things from Dangerous Liaisons and The Sheltering Sky. Ceilings in other rooms are the haunts of Pedro Almodóvar and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In yet another, Donald Sutherland does a turn as Casanova under the direction of Federico Fellini. This is not Adam touching fingers with God, by any stretch of the imagination.

Nor does it resemble the state of movie sex three quarters of a century ago. For example, both members of a married couple had to keep one foot visibly on the floor if they were in the same bed. During the 1950's, this magazine carried ads for room dividers to keep husbands and wives away from each other's twin beds. Even the French had a hard time being naughty. Characters played by Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux in 1953's Madame de. . . had to blow good-night kisses not from separate beds but from separate bedrooms.

To think we now have Hollywood stars giving us instructions from the ceiling!

The world's sexiest ceilings are in the bedrooms at Ateliers Jean Nouvel's Hotel Lucerne in Switzerland.

It wasn't enough to put husband and wife in narrow separate beds; there had to be a screen between them.

From left: When it converted from a settee or a sectional, the Duo-Bed offered headboards, reading lamps, and a nightstand, all built in. Eventually, convenience gave way to Technicolor rapture.

Gaetano Pesce has called a number of Zerodisegno furniture pieces Nobody's Perfect, but it seems the perfect name for a bed.

From top: This Murphy bed went posh inside an armoire.

No one quite realized that the ashtray on the night table between twin beds was a greater danger to society than a king-size mattress.