A Contemporary Women's Fiction novelist, "love" is an integral part of my repertoire. Since merely eighteen years of age by 1969, it is safe to say I fathomed Einstein's Theory of Relativity better than the depths of romance.

The Beatles spearheaded the British Invasion by wanting to hold our hand, loving us yeah, yeah, yeah, and assuring us all we need is love.

However, a honey-toned, Brazilian chanteuse named Astrud Gilberto who made her professional singing debut with "The Girl from Ipanema" in 1963, bossa novaed love in the proper perspective as the daring decade of the Sixties emerged. Her quivery voice subtly and realistically bemoaned the complexity of love hitherto hushed behind closed bedroom doors of the conservative fifties.

Astrud Gilberto's wistfulness resonates through lyrics conveying naivety, vulnerability, melancholia, betrayal, resignation, and fatalism. Take "A Certain Sadness":


Darling tell me now
Have I done wrong somehow
That you won't look at me
It is pointed out
Can't keep my wits about
When you won't look at me

Before the Sixties rocked n’ rolled as a hotbed of social protest, before Hippies shredded our mod fashions into tatters, before the Woodstock Unconvention, before women's libbers burned their bras, and before the sexual revolution became the shot heard 'round the world - there was herringbone! And, the likes of Bridgette Bardot and Jean Seberg, beehive hairdos, eyes darkly shadowed and rimmed with heavy black eyeliner.

The silhouettes of notable award-winning films grappled with the complexity of love and life before we Baby Boomers rounded the bend to the far side of the Sixties where the scales tipped in favor of casual sex and free love:

1961 - In 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' a country gal attempts to achieve independence and reinvention as the madcap, free-spirited, social climber Holly Golightly who distances herself from Super Rats. While earning a living by dating male escorts and providing courier service to an ex-mobster in prison, she falls in love with a kept writer. Love unravels Ms. Golightly's glamorous facade, painfully exposing her neuroses and vulnerabilities.

1963 - The lush photography of French film 'A Man and a Woman' is the backdrop for this reel of realism drawing out feelings of guilt between a widow and widower who meet and fall in love shortly after the death of their spouses.

1965 - The corruption of love evolving into an illicit passionate affair between a Bohemian-lifestyle painter and conservative married minister surges along the rugged Big Sur coastline in 'The Sandpiper.' In my opinion, Astrud Gilberto superbly laments love's transient tides in her rendition of "The Shadow of Your Smile," the movie's love theme.

Lyrics to Astrud Gilberto's memorable songs and imagery in unforgettable films of the decade offer a glimpse into the stirring of love in the Sixties through realism. The cavalier attitude of the sexual revolution may have promoted casual encounters without conscience. However, love is not free, exacting its own toll and imparting a certain sadness:

Now the rain has gone
But something lingers on
There's certain sadness here
Now that the sky is clear

I have forwarded my article to Ms. Gilberto shortly after it was written and originally published at 'The Sixties Official Site.'