Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967): USA

Reviewed by Markus Linecker. Viewed at the AFI Filmfest 2017

Barefoot in the Park is a farcical romp through the side of a romantic relationship that is rarely portrayed in romance films. After the kiss and the wedding, usually it is fade-to-black, but what comes next? Robert Redford and Jane Fonda explore this other side in a take-off of Neil Simon’s eponymous play, adapted by the same.  Paul and Corie come into their wedding hotel in a horse-and-carriage, getting stock New York characters’ attention. They are wildly sexually interested in one another, until they move into their horrible fifth-floor walk-up (six if you count the front stoop, which provides numerous gags for all the characters visiting them). Where Corie is free-spirited, immediately attaching herself to their wild, mountain-climbing neighbor, Velasco, Paul is a conservative young lawyer with his first case, as he repeatedly announces throughout his bride’s antics.

Reality sets in as they get to know each other, to their dismay. Their antics in this process really draw out the stage origin of the play. As they move from lovers to the brink of the divorce in two acts, director Gene Saks (of The Odd Couple fame) holds no bars in letting them flop histrionically around the limited locations, followed breathless in their wake by mother Ethel Banks, played by Mildred Netwick, who goes from straight-laced and miserable to easy-going and romantic as a foil to the main characters.

The mise en scene allows for detailed realism that is not over-done. As is common with films from the ‘60s, it has natural lighting, bright and colorful, such as in the outdoor scenes in the park, as well as in the apartment and restaurant. It is very straight-forward, not many cuts, with a few tracking shots, but primarily Steady cam work. Overall, it really kept the idea of a play, allowing the characters energy to speak for itself.