See "The Artist"

It's not hard to love "The Artist." It's got everything (a dog, humor, meeting cute, even a kind of car chase) and most of all it has a heart that isn’t a hackneyed pitch “with edge” cooked up for a five minute meeting with the money boys. The "heart" I speak of is in the recognized Great Depression dynamic of the traditional male power holder being overtaken and surpassed by the soft power of women. Economic stress has a way of doing this to sexual roles.  It resonates with audiences. Noticed any economic stress around lately?
 
On audience response, at the Indianapolis matinee I attended the half-filled theater broke into applause at the end.  (The last time I did this was in mock approval of “Avatar.) I’m certain many left the theater dancing--at least in their imaginations. After all, the happy ending of "The Artist" is a dance scene, a man and a woman sharing the stage, accepting (with a sincere smile) to keep on keeping on, together. This is what audiences asked for and got from the industrial studios of Hollywood in the dirty thirties. Doesn’t this French import with its cultural-historical smarts coming to us in the third year of the Bush Depression fulfill a similar need?