Why Bare­foot in the Park is the per­fect exam­ple of on-screen chemistry

On-screen chem­istry: you either have it or you don’t. Either way it’s an impor­tant fac­tor in any movie romance. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling had it in Crazy, Stu­pid Love, as did Katharine Hep­burn and Cary Grant in Bring­ing Up Baby, but it’s Jane Fon­da and Robert Red­ford in Gene Saks 1967 film Bare­foot in the Park who real­ly stand out from the pack.

Fresh from get­ting mar­ried, we meet Corie (Jane Fon­da) and Paul Brat­ter (Robert Red­ford) kiss­ing while sat in the back of a horse-drawn car­riage on their way to The Plaza Hotel in New York City. It’s the open­ing scene of the film and the pair are instant­ly believ­able as a cou­ple who are head-over-heels in love. They are so infat­u­at­ed with one anoth­er that they don’t even realise they’ve reached their des­ti­na­tion. It is then that a bar­rage quick comedic wit com­mences, with the two ban­ter­ing back and forth in between kisses.

But it is when the cou­ple check into the hotel that their on-screen flir­ta­tion attains peak ten­der­ness. The concierge asks: “…and will Mrs Brat­ter be stay­ing with you?” Tem­porar­i­ly for­get­ting they are now hus­band and wife Paul replies: ​“My Moth­er?” Real­is­ing what he’s said Paul affec­tion­ate­ly bumps Corie’s head with his and laughs. The action appears so real and so dot­ing it’s hard to believe that the two are are just acting.

It would seem that there may have actu­al­ly been some real­i­ty to the infat­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly on Fonda’s part. As she told Ellen DeGeneres: ​“I realise that I’ve grown up, because in the three pre­vi­ous movies, I was always in love with him. The only prob­lem with work­ing with Bob is that I just look into his… I kind of fall into his eyes and for­get my dia­logue. God, so good looking.”

This sense of ado­ra­tion is mir­rored in the duo’s fourth film togeth­er, Our Souls At Night. In one scene, the cou­ple Addie and Louis are shown sit­ting in a car while Louis dri­ves. Slow­ly, Addie scoots her way clos­er to Louis and ten­der­ly places her head on his shoul­der. Louis’ facial expres­sions as he sneaks a few glances at Addie while dri­ving, and her besot­ted looks back at him, prove that the mag­ic remains between Fon­da and Redford.

What’s spe­cial about Bare­foot in the Park is that it draws togeth­er two very dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ty types. The viva­cious and adven­tur­ous Corie and the con­ser­v­a­tive and dig­ni­fied Paul. Almost echo­ing this is the rela­tion­ship that forms between Corie’s moth­er Ethel (Mil­dred Natwick) and the couple’s neigh­bour Mr Vic­tor Velas­co (Charles Boy­er). The film is about the strug­gles and sac­ri­fices of mar­ried life. It looks at these polar oppo­sites and asks the ques­tion: can love real­ly con­quer all? If the nat­ur­al affec­tion between Fon­da and Red­ford didn’t exist, would the film have endured the way it has? They are so adorable togeth­er and their love is so con­vinc­ing, so the film is a tri­umph. You’re made to care for the char­ac­ters and you will them to work out their problems.

Based on a play of the same name, the film was large­ly shot with­in the inti­mate con­fines of a sin­gle small room. This fac­tor is sig­nif­i­cant to the com­e­dy aspect of the film, and reflects the close­ness we feel for the pro­tag­o­nists. Direc­tor Saks makes excep­tion­al use of the space, using it to accom­plish some of film’s most hilar­i­ous moments. Five flights up (with a stoop, count­ed or not count­ed depend­ing on your per­son­al­i­ty), a hole in the sky­light, no bath­tub, no heat­ing and a bed­room the size of a clos­et, it’s no won­der the sar­cas­tic one-lin­ers fly high. These prob­lems, com­bined with the couple’s con­trast­ing per­son­al­i­ties, become the ulti­mate test for their mar­riage. It is fas­ci­nat­ing to observe how these char­ac­ters change through­out the film, slow­ly real­is­ing that to make things work they have to rec­on­cile their differences.

In the clos­ing scenes we see Paul get­ting ​‘lousy’ drunk while walk­ing bare­foot in Wash­ing­ton Square park. It’s a response to Corie’s repeat­ed com­plaints about his sober and square demeanour. After Corie gets him home, Paul walks up onto the sky­light, copy­ing his odd­ball neigh­bour Mr Velas­co who uses the roof to access his apart­ment above.

In an attempt to emu­late some of Velasco’s adven­tur­ous qual­i­ties that Corie adores so much, a com­plete­ly sloshed Paul slips and near­ly falls. This in turn draws the cou­ple back to one anoth­er – a brush with death helps to nur­ture the sense of romance and belong­ing fur­ther and deep­er. The moment is dra­mat­ic, but also very fun­ny and sur­pris­ing­ly sen­ti­men­tal. It serves as a final cat­a­lyst to knock some sense into the cou­ple. It proves that while mar­riage is hard work, some­times, it’s worth it.