Reflections
on Love (1966)
This is a silly and wonderfully groovy
little 12 minute pop film from the mid-60's. An essay
on love and marriage, the film begins with a bride
putting on her make-up and running in her wedding
dress through an abandoned building.
Then "Reflections of Love," spends
the first 2/3 of it's running time simply compiling
images of youngsters running around and looking back
and forth at one and other. The fashion and the mod
images of "swinging" London are quite fun to look
at in cinematic retrospection. The film seems almost
as interested in boys as girls, so we gets lots of
cuties, regardless of your orientation or gender,
to gawk at.
To date the piece, some images of the
Beatles in their clean- cut days are shown. The Fab
4 arrive at an airport and wave at fans while the
photographers snap their pictures on the tarmac. Everything
is so keen.
Eventually, we begin to focus on one
couple of youthful lovers as they cavort around in
front of a theater showing "Help." By this time a
new pop song is blasting on the soundtrack.
Finally, in the film's somewhat startling
ending, the music stops and the couple, with parents
and siblings in tow, are married at a courthouse.
No one looks happy at all. The film ends with them
on the courthouse steps while a silent mob of locals
looks them over.
A kitschy look back at romance and
marriage, "Reflections of Love" seems highly amusing
now. It's idea, that a woman dreams of marriage, a
man thinks of sex and neither is happy at the nuptials,
is almost too subtle to be noticeable here. Like much
of the mid-60's, the message is hidden under bright
colors and pop images.
