The first bed scene in Hitchcock is when Jill shares Patsy's bed in THE PLEASURE Garden. As Truffaut has suggested, with Patsy wearing pyjamas and Jill a night-dress, there are perhaps suppressed sexual undercurrents to the scene (Truffaut 1968: 33). But the rather playful tone of the scene is less typical of Hitchcock than the film's subsequent, more troubled, bed scenes. When Patsy marries Levet, the ensuing extended honeymoon sequence includes a scene of her waking after her wedding night and being tended by him. Levet seems considerate, but the honeymoon sequence overall serves, rather, to emphasise his moral corruption: in fact, he has little time for Patsy's feelings – all he is interested in is sex. Even at this point in his career, Hitchcock was not only critical of male sexuality but quite prepared to show a honeymoon, that most privileged of romantic experiences, in a negative light.

Later bed scenes are darker. Levet leaves Patsy to return to his work in a West African colonial outpost; Patsy follows him and finds him in a drunken, dissolute state living with a ‘native woman’. She recoils from him; Levet murders the native woman (➢ WATER). As this occurs, Patsy is nursing the bed-ridden Hugh, Jill's ex-fiancé, and Hitchcock effects a brilliant juxtaposition between Levet's murderous hands and Patsy's caring ones (➢ HANDS). This also leads to juxtaposed bed scenes. As Patsy nurses Hugh, the latter in his fever thinks that she is Jill. This is cross-cut with Levet hallucinating that the native woman is coming back to haunt him, and she first appears, ghost-like, over his bed. Levet then comes to reclaim Patsy from Hugh, arriving just as Patsy – acting ‘as’ Jill – responds to Hugh's request and kisses him. The kiss makes Hugh realise who Patsy is, but provokes Levet into threats of violence: Patsy is obliged to return home with him. We next see Levet back in his own bed; Patsy lights a lamp. This wakes him, and he now hallucinates the native woman emerging from the bed to point at some swords on the wall, which he takes as a sign that he should murder Patsy.