BAREFOOT IN THE PARK: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1967) Paramount Home Video

For generations, the name Neil Simon has conjured to mind pleasures affected chiefly from Simon’s unique yen to see the humor in often awkward social situations and to extol it in a way that never preyed upon the audiences’ sadism for laughing at ordinary people in pain. One of the most Emmy/Tony and Oscar-nominated writers ever, Simon reigned as America’s éminence grise and the nation’s most prolific playwright from 1957 (the year he began to write for comedian Sid Caesar), to 1991 (for which his final work, Lost in Yonkers, garnered not only the Tony, but also the Pulitzer).  The Bronx-born Simon, growing up poor and in a household full of parental pandemonium, nicknamed ‘Doc’ and judged as extremely shy in his youth, arguably had a lot to say – not only about life but also, his keen observations and thoughts on the paces of marital strife young couples oft put themselves through on the very bumpy road to ‘forever after’.  Better still, Simon had the wherewithal at a very early age to recognize his only means of escaping the chaos at home was to forge ahead on his own. And thus, the seeds of independence were implanted at a very early age.

Simon’s escapism took on the form of retreating into the darkened and cavernous movie palaces that once dotted the downtown Manhattan landscape, his affinity for the great comedians taking shape as the impetus for his own comedic genius. Immersing himself in the literary witticisms of Mark Twain, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman and S. J. Perelman, upon graduation and a stint in the Army Reserve, Simon teamed with his brother, Danny, quit his mailroom clerk’s job at Warner Bros. and began to aggressively pursue a career as a writer. His big break came on Your Show of Shows, for which he received consecutive Emmy nominations between 1951-54 (winning in both 1952 and 1953). Simon then moved on to The Phil Silvers Show, diligently applying his waggishness to scripts for the 1958/59 seasons. Then, in 1961, came the first flourish of success on Broadway with Come Blow Your Horn – a play it took Simon 3-full-years to write, and ran an impressive 678 performances. But it would be for Simon’s next two efforts that his reputation as America’s hottest young playwright was justly secured.

If a preamble to Neil Simon’s illustrious early career seems like an odd introduction to a film review for Barefoot in the Park, the 1967 cinematic adaptation of Simon’s 1963 breakout play, it nevertheless serves to illustrate a point about the movie; that despite the winsome combination of a very young – exceptionally handsome Robert Redford, and, positively luminous Jane Fonda (at the tail end of Hollywood’s aspirations to make her over as a sixties’ sex kitten) – the real/reel star of the picture is Simon’s superb and extremely literate jocularity. This, in tandem, manages, seemingly with effortless aplomb, to walk a tightrope between ‘genuine mixed emotions’ and a sort of stylized screwball, unseen on the screen since the late 1930’s, yet winningly updated to accommodate the more jaded social outlook of the 1960’s. Barefoot in the Park – the play, was actually Simon’s first mega hit, almost immediately followed by the stage version of The Odd Couple (1965), making Simon the only playwright to have 4 huge hits concurrently running on Broadway for the 1966 season: Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple and Barefoot in the Park. The movie, while certainly charming, loses something in translation as director, Gene Saks grapples with ways to ‘open up’ the picture beyond Simon’s claustrophobic 3-act structure, almost entirely confined to a very cramped, one-bedroom apartment set on the stage.

The picture is immensely blessed to have Redford and Fonda as its stars, and, in delightful support, character actor, Mildred Natwicke, and the legendary, Charles Boyer. Natwicke and Boyer are old hams, properly cured and expertly evolved. Given Simon’s material, they positively glow as the awkwardly united geriatric lovers of the piece. As for Redford, he had cut his teeth as the original star of the Broadway show, and emerges in the movie even more acutely aware that his role as stuffy attorney, Paul Bratter stirred by wife, Corie’s (Fonda) unhinged joie de vivre, is, in fact, playing second fiddle, not only to Fonda’s emerging and liberated gal/pal – soon to blossom into her own woman – but also Natwicke, as Corie’s daft mum, Ethel Banks, and Boyer’s penniless and eccentric bon vivant, Victor Velasco. If anything, Redford’s WASP is the anchor role in Simon’s sea of social misfits, and Paul’s alcoholic implosion at the end of the picture marginally throws off the balance of the piece. If coming from the disadvantage of not having starred in the play, Fonda nevertheless was well-versed in its artistic milieu, having appeared in Peter Tewksbury’s Sunday in New York (1963) – in many ways, though only in hindsight, a rather shameless movie rip-off of ‘Barefoot’, then running live on Broadway.

It is the situations and the badinage that matter most in Barefoot in the Park’s movie reboot and Saks, distinctly aware he is micromanaging a rigidly structured stagecraft, gingerly massages the details to allow the audience to bask in Simon’s prose while only occasionally lending out the flavor of New York to enjoy as well. So, the picture opens with a brisk carriage ride through Central Park under the main titles, and then, a preamble at the famed Plaza Hotel where – presumably – the newlyweds spend six blissful days in carnal experimentation before reality settles in and the move to their more permanent tenement, five-breathless flights up to a cramped bachelor’s apartment, begins causing friction for the ‘happy couple’.  From the moment Saks introduces us to this dingy little hovel, complete with rusty plumbing and a gaping hole in the skylight, the actors play most of their scenes with few cuts, allowing for continuity in their barb-loaded interactions. In between, we get Herb Edelman as befuddled Bell telephone installer, Harry Pepper, and a flash of Mabel Albertson as Corie’s Aunt Harriet, also, Fritz Feld as the proprietor of an Albanian restaurant on Staten Island – one of only a handful of vignettes that do not take place in Brad and Corie’s flat.

Barefoot in the Park opens with Corie’s exuberant declaration, tossing her bridal bouquet to a cop from a carriage in Central Park. Corie has only just wed handsome lawyer, Paul Bratter, a decidedly more reserved fellow. After their week-long honeymoon at the Plaza, the couple move into their decaying Greenwich Village apartment. Corie blissfully decorates the leaky/creaky rooms, while overlooking the realities of the place; namely, it lacks proper heating and has a gaping hole in the ceiling. Paul is willing to overlook Corie’s devil-may-care ineptitude. He really does love her. And Corie’s mother, the affluent but reserved Ethel is circumspect about revealing her truer impressions regarding their humble abode. Paul goes to work and wins his first big case. Corie is ecstatic and proud. But Paul is a realist. The client is penniless and thus the win does not equate to any remuneration to benefit his meager standing. At the same time, Paul begins to get suspicious about his neighbors, learning their building is populated by a menagerie of weird outcasts. The most sociable of the lot is Victor Velasco, a penniless ex-mountain climber, locked out of his attic apartment for owing 4-months’ rent, and currently to circumvent the changed locks on his door by accessing his residence through Corie and Brad’s bedroom window, scaling the building from the outside.

Victor’s slightly seedy European sophistication appeals to Corie, and thus she elects to set-up her widowed mother on a blind date. Paul, Corie and Ethel attend Victor in his attic apartment, enjoying a few stiff drinks before Victor encourages everyone to follow him to Staten Island for a Bohemian night at an out-of-the-way Albanian restaurant. Paul is decidedly uncomfortable, as is Ethel, although she at least makes the attempt to assimilate into Corie’s wild abandonment that, after a few more libations, results in Corie and Victor cavorting with a belly dancer – the restaurant’s ‘entertainment’. At the end of their night’s excursion, Victor offers to escort Ethel home. And although she resists, at first, after slipping on the ice just outside the apartment building, falling down a flight of stairs, Ethel is taken back to Victor’s attic where she spends the night. Meanwhile, Paul and Corie bicker over their decided differences. Paul feels it was cruel for Corie to set her mother up on a blind date, while Corie believes Paul’s tight-lipped conservatism is ruining their chances at happiness. Impetuously, Corie asks for a divorce, after Paul refuses to go barefoot in the park with her because it is freezing outside. Corie kicks Paul out of the marital bed. He crashes on the sofa, but is ‘snowed’ upon from the hole in the skylight, awakening the next morning with a terrific head cold.

Corie kicks Paul out, then discovers her own mother has spent the night with Victor in the attic. A short while later, Corie and Ethel discuss what the future may hold for each of them over lunch at a nearby restaurant. Corie confides she has asked for a divorce from Paul. But Ethel insists their love is too strong. This is only a misunderstanding. It will pass. Meanwhile Paul, having decamped, gets soused and skips out of work. As he laments his situation to a drunkard in Washington Square Park, Paul is confronted by a repentant Corie. And although, in his current drunken state, he is precisely the sort of devil-may-care Corie professes to desire, she now realizes what a good thing she had and wants the old Paul back. He, instead, orders her out of their apartment and decides to prove himself further by scaling the building as Victor did, clumsily stumbling along its narrow ledge. Suddenly sober, Paul teeters on the brink, forcing Corie to follow him onto the ledge. As Ethel and Victor look on at street level with a gathered crowd, Corie and Paul embrace and are reconciled - true love, triumphant after all.  

Barefoot in the Park is, at times, channeling Neil Simon’s creative bent, particularly when exploring the more meaningful subtext in Corie and Paul’s sincerely flawed relationship. Opposites may attract. But do they share enough to stay together? This age-old question is at the crux of Simon’s ‘he said/she told’ critique of this questionable ‘ever after’; Simon, far more interested in what happens once the bloom and sexual euphoria has rubbed off. If the picture’s ending suggests precisely the sort of the ‘hearts and flowers’ restoration of mutual bliss, perpetuated as the ‘be all/end all’ in Hollywood movies, in this case, it is likely only a temporary fix. For having once fallen from grace (though mercifully, not the top of the building) Paul and Corie are apt to fall, then fall again. Thematically, Simon has tapped into the universals afflicting humanity’s struggle to find happiness on its own terms rather than concentrating on a ‘connect the dots’ scenario to achieve mutual satisfaction before the final fade out. Simon, instead unearths the absurdity in our frustrations and insecurities, yet never in a way to cruelly distance his reflections from the vantage of a ‘clever/clever’ know-it-all storyteller. With a great affinity for his fellow man, Simon is not writing about people he knows with problems but rather, the problems of his youth and life, experienced first-hand, reworked and finessed into a ‘good story’ with guts and a very thin veneer separating his own soul from that of his characters. Thus, they react with genuine flesh and blood remorse and Simon’s own hunger to do better, in spite of being all too human and thus prone to failure. Revealing such nuggets of wisdom and coating them with honesty as well as good humor, Simon avails us of the more painful aspects of life in a way that appears less agonizing, though never farcically artificial.

Incredible to think almost 60-years have passed since Simon first debuted the play. Depending on one’s point of view, it remains even more satisfying to see how little has changed in male/female relations in the interim, making Simon’s astute observations ever more apropos, enlightened and meaningful. By the mid-1970’s, Neil Simon’s reputation as America’s foremost playwright bypassed even the legacies of Paddy Chayefsky and Arthur Miller.  And if, in later works, he increasingly focused on exorcising his own extensive back catalog of regrets, three of these latter-day autobiographical plays, arguably less effective than some of his earlier masterworks - Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983), Biloxi Blues (1985) and Broadway Bound (1986), were capped off by a memorable return to form in his swan song, Lost in Yonkers (1991). Disappointed with the way his first play had been adapted into a movie, Simon made the executive decision thereafter to always amend his own works for the screen, resulting in 4 Oscar nominations along the way, for The Odd Couple (1969), The Sunshine Boys (1976), The Goodbye Girl (1978) and California Suite (1979). Nevertheless, Simon always considered his work in Hollywood a distant ‘secondary career’ to his first love - stagecraft. Throughout his career, Simon’s motto remained, try not to make it funny – rather make it real and the comedy will follow. “I can't think of a humorous situation that does not involve some pain,” Simon once mused, “I used to ask, ‘What is a funny situation?’ Now I ask, ‘What is a sad situation and how can I tell it humorously?’”

Simon’s woes and joy are on full display in Paramount’s newly minted Blu-ray of Barefoot in the Park. With one or two exceptions in which distressingly awful rear projection is used, resulting in transparently soft image quality with an amplification of film grain, this 1080p effort looks very good indeed. Most of the picture’s exteriors were shot in New York, lending the production a very genuine flavor and charm, impossible to recapture on a sound stage in Hollywood, though, at one brutally bad interval, a scene showing Paul hung over on a park bench is marred by distracting process plates of the city behind him, with obvious gate weave built in to the already distracting artifice and for which no amount of modern-day digital finessing could have done much to improve the baked-in end results. Otherwise, Barefoot in the Park looks rather marvelous, with good, solid color reproduction, accurately rendered flesh tones, a light smattering of grain appearing indigenous to its source, and an attractive amount of fine detail, especially in medium shots and close-ups, where minute detail in hair, skin and costuming is detected. Contrast is excellent, and there is scarcely one or two instances where age-related artifacts momentarily crop up.  A nice effort from Paramount, especially considering the attractive price point of this disc – retailing for barely $11 at most places. The 2.0 DTS mono audio is adequate and has also been given some consideration. As this is primarily a dialogue-driven movie, you are not watching Barefoot in the Park for a full-on audiophile’s experience. One regret – NO extras. Bottom line: a charming picture that holds up under today’s scrutiny with a nice remastering effort from Paramount.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

0