By 1954 the portmanteau film was running out of gas. Early sightings from England (Dead of Night, The Old Dark House, Quartet) had generated interest to the extent that Hollywood took a flyer (O'Henry's Full House, We're Not Married) but as usual it was France that put the icing on the cake via Souvenirs Perdus. Max Ophuls weighed in with Le Plaisir and Duvivier, who had actually been doing this stuff since the thirties albeit not so rigidly defined, contributed The Devil And The Ten Commandments. So the pickings were lean by the time Henri Decoin and Jean Delannoy tried their hand yet Bed Stories is never less than interesting largely due to them. The casting director who conceived teaming Jeanne Moreau with Richard Todd must surely have been at the magic champignons, an English equivalent around the same time would have been Peggy Ashcroft and Maxwell Reed. On the other hand the Moreau-Todd segment (and unbelievably he had the higher profile at the time) which kicks things off has a built-in charm factor and Decoin's sure touch ensures it cops the Best Segment nod. There's more joke casting in the shape of top-of-the-line Vittorio de Seca and starlet-of-the-month Dawn Adams as the divorce-seeking wife and the professional co-respondent who spend a night together in a hotel; this was old hat when Fred and Ginger were at it in The Gay Divorce and apart from Italian charm nothing much else emerges. There follows one of those it-was-all-a-dream episodes featuring two forgettable people until what should have been the kicker arrives featuring Martine Carol who by that time had fought her way to the number one spot at the French box office-where she would soon be ousted by the inferior Brigitte Bardot- and Bernard Blier though this sequence turns out to be something of a damp squib. Invaluable as a time-capsule.