Barefoot in the Park

Barefoot in the Park (1967) is Gene Saks' featherlight romantic comedy, ready to watch online on iFILM. Fresh off their honeymoon, newlyweds Paul and Corie Bratter move into a tiny top-floor walk-up in Greenwich Village: five flights of stairs, no elevator, a hole in the skylight, and a February draft blowing right through the place.

Corie (Jane Fonda) is a dreamer who finds the whole adventure thrilling. Paul (Robert Redford) is a buttoned-up young lawyer with his first big case looming and somebody else's creaky floors underfoot. Their marriage survived the hotel just fine; three days in the real apartment, it starts to wobble. Their eccentric upstairs neighbour Victor Velasco (Charles Boyer) climbs through their window to reach his attic, and Corie schemes to set him up with her widowed mother Ethel over dinner. The double date at a wild Albanian restaurant goes sideways, and suddenly the young couple is muttering about divorce.

Neil Simon adapted his own Broadway hit here, with Redford reprising the role he played on stage. Watching a young Fonda and Redford bicker over the heating and the staircase is simply a delight. Talky, warm, and unmistakably New York, it makes for an easy cozy evening. Stream Barefoot in the Park (1967) online on iFILM.