BAREFOOT IN THE PARK

US, 1967, 107 minutes, Colour.
Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Charles Boyer, Mildred Natwick.
Directed by Gene Saks.

Barefoot in the Park is one of the earliest screen adaptations of Neil Simon’s plays. Simon had been writing for television since the late 1940s and then moved to theatre where he was a great success from the 60s through to the 1990s. Many of his plays were adapted for the screen – and later remade for television. A number of his later plays were adapted immediately for television.

The film is very much one of the 1960s in style and manner. Newlyweds try to find accommodation, fall in and out of love – and are helped by their neighbour, a type of elderly cupid, played with great flair by Charles Boyer. The film is strong, of course, with having Robert Redford and Jane Fonda as the leads. Redford was emerging as a star at this period. Jane Fonda had already begun her acting career at the beginning of the 1960s. They work well together. Mildred Natwick offers entertaining support.

HBO made a live-action version, with audience, of the play in 1981 with Bess Armstrong and Richard Thomas.

The film was directed by Gene Saks, a director who worked mainly in television but whose films of the 1960s and 1970s include Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, Cactus Flower, Neil Simon’s The Last of the Red Hot Lovers and Mame. In the mid-80s he made a version of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs.

1. The significance in the title for the film? The meanings given it during the film - as regards Paul? Its significance for the overall theme?

2. How successful a comedy was this? Was it funny? Did it give insight via the comedy? How?

3. Playwright Neil Simon is noted for his shrewd observation of peopole. Was this in evidence in this film? In situations and dialogue? In the themes chosen? In ordinary people and ordinary interactions? In his wit?

4. How wise was the film about people? In seeing them as they are? In seeing them as slightly funnier than they are? In picking up people's foibles and exposing them? In exploring foibles? Especially American foibles?

5. What did the film have to say about marriage and divorce? How was it on the side of marriage? What insights into the reality of marriage did it give? Of love, of the realities and pinpricks of marriage compared with romance? The easiness of American divorce as a way out?

6. How typical an American film was this? How American was it? Could these things happen to non-American couples in the same way? What insight into American character and temperament did the film give?

7. How did the film rely on audience presuppositions about heroes and heroines? The audiences' ordinary idea of romantic heroes and heroines? Of American heroes and heroines in comedy? What insight into this kind of heroism did the film give laughingly?

8. What did the film have to say about mothers? How right was it? On rakish heroes? On love in middle-age and on old age?

9. Why can films like this give insight via comedy? Which were the best examples?

10. Why were some of the scenes particularly funny? What made them funny? What film techniques contributed to the humour? Whose lines were the funniest? Why?

11. How attractive a character was Paul? Why was he so stuffy? How romantic a hero? Why did he change during the early days of marriage? His reaction to the flat? To the furniture? To Corey and her mother? Why did the marriage begin to break down so quickly? What broke Paul? Was it good that he got drunk and danced barefoot in the park? The exaggerations of the ending and yet the point being made?

12. How attractive a character was Corie? How realistic? How romantic? How typical of a young married wife? Her behaviour during the honeymoon? Her practicality in looking for the furnishings etc? her relationship with her mother? With Victor? Her talking about freedom and romance and yet her reaction to Paul leaving and getting drunk? The impact on her of Paul's being on the roof?

13. How amusing were Ethel and Victor? What did they add to the film? How different would the film have been without them? How good a mother and mother-in-law was Ethel? Her funny lines?

14. The background of New York - important for the film? (Or was the film very similar in its limitations to the play it was based on?)

15. How satirical was the ending - on the roof, the divorce? How happy was the ending - rightly so?