This Robert Redford & Jane Fonda Rom-Com Is Their Best Team-Up

The Big Picture

• Barefoot in the Park
  successfully adapts a play into a film by keeping the focus on dialogue and the core relationship, rather than expanding the setting.
• The film’s limited setting of a New York apartment allows the audience to witness the changes in Corie and Paul’s marriage in real-time without distractions.
• By sticking to the play’s roots,
  Barefoot in the Park
  stands out among other romantic comedies and offers a unique and humorous experience through its sharp dialogue.

For a film with a name like Barefoot in the Park, barely any screen time is spent outside of newlyweds Corie (Jane Fonda) and Paul’s (Robert Redford) new Greenwich Village apartment. But when you look at the movie’s roots, it’s actually not very surprising that most of the action would be set so statically. Barefoot in the Park was originally a play written by Neil Simon in 1963, just four years prior to the film’s release in 1967, which means that things were confined to only a few set changes instead of the excess of locations that a movie is usually able to offer. While at face value it might not seem like the most interesting thing to mirror a film almost exactly like the play, it’s refreshing for the dialogue and core of the story to be the main focus of the movie. Barefoot in the Park is a sharply written rom-com that features Robert Redford and Jane Fonda’s best collaboration to date.

Most of the time, when a film is adapted from a play into a film, the world opens up and everything gets larger, but for Barefoot in the Park, the production remained at just around the same level. For example, another film featuring Fonda (On Golden Pond) was originally a play before it became a film, but when it hit the big screen, everything expanded instead of remaining fit for the stage. That’s not to say that one choice is better than the other, as both decisions ended up complementing their play roots fittingly. On Golden Pond is about the relationships that grew in the expanse of the lake house and the lake itself, whereas the rom-com explores a relationship morphing within the confines of an apartment, so no major scenery changes were necessary.

Without a bustling background acting as a third main character, the audience is able to experience the changes to Corie and Paul’s marriage without interruption, as the two are just starting to realize (inside their tiny, fifth-floor walk-up) that their personalities are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Corie is far more free-spirited than Paul, who’s more tightly-wound and conventional as a hardworking lawyer in New York City. However, when everything in their apartment starts going wrong, including a massive hole in their skylight in the middle of the winter, their differences become even more amplified, and Corie decides that she wants a divorce.

Because of the freezing cold weather in their apartment, Paul ends up getting furiously ill and then drunk later on, to the point that he ends up walking around Washington Square Park without any shoes on (hence the name of the film). This forces Corie to be the caretaker and more conservative one for the first time ever, allowing her to see just why Paul is the way that he is. Things end up working out in the end for the couple, as Corie and Paul are able to ultimately see the world from each other’s angles and realize that their differences actually bring out the positives in each other, but had the film been shot differently, it might’ve been more clumsy getting to that point. By keeping the focus almost solely on Corie and Paul, we were able to witness their changes in real-time, which doesn’t always happen on screen. Sometimes, it’s a bubbling premonition that occurs over time, but with Barefoot in the Park, those changes are out in the open for everyone to see.

When the focus of a film is placed on the dialogue, it forces us to listen… to really listen to what’s going on in front of us instead of getting lost in the outside movement, which is what makes Barefoot in the Park such a different romantic comedy from what we’re normally used to. It seems almost weird to think of the rom-coms of today being shot in a way that prohibits the story from moving beyond the realm of a single apartment, including films like You’ve Got Mail and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Barefoot in the Park is a perfect example of how well a film can work if it sticks to its guns instead of attempting to do something a little more out of the ordinary, though in keeping with the play’s roots, the movie actually stands out among other romantic comedies.

From the outside, it might feel like Barefoot in the Park is a more serious film within the rom-com genre, but because there’s such a focus on the dialogue, it’s actually easier to tune in and appreciate the humor for what it is. Fonda and Redford brought a chemistry between each other and an overwhelming honesty to both of their characters individually that really couldn’t have been replicated by any other acting duo. For one, Fonda’s Corie and Redford’s Paul make no excuses for their (very different) personalities, and they don’t try to make their characters conform outside of their quirks. Remaining true to and focused on their characters’ cores allowed a fuller picture to be drawn of their dynamic together.

Ultimately, Barefoot in the Park created an unlikely but almost flawless adaptation of its play of the same name: it’s Fonda and Redford at their absolute best, paired with a hilarious script and a phenomenal directing angle from the eyes of Gene Saks. It might feel like a far cry from the more in-your-face, wild romantic comedies of today, but it’s certainly a film to look back on for a better understanding of just how many different ways the genre can be interpreted.

Barefoot in the Park is currently streaming on Hoopla in the U.S.

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