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Singin' in the Rain:
RF
 R.F. Simpson, while treated more amicably than Lina by the film, remains 'outside' for similar reasons. His lack of imagination, memorably demonstrated with his "I can't quite imagine it, I need to see it on screen" after the "Broadway Melody" ballet sequence, is combined with his role as a studio head who only ever responds to circumstance. This allows him to be able to save "The Duelling Cavalier" by accepting Cosmo and Don's suggestions, but also renders him ineffectual against Lina's self serving claims. Of course, unlike Lina, by film's end he is a willing participant in the simultaneous unmasking and unveiling that is the story's denouement, an apparent recognition on behalf of the film of the role of capital and the studio in its own viability as a medium.
It should be stressed that the intelligence of this position is impressive. As a film that offers itself as proof of cinema's ability to embrace popular and high art Singin' in the Rain recognises that for all of modernism's claims for creative freedom cinema requires what is best described as an industrial infrastructure. The film doesn't wish to make an argument just for the misunderstood artist, but for a popular medium that it is simultaneously endorsing.
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