Starting off with the more obvious, hopefully moving onto deeper complexities, the entire film is based upon the belief that the medium of film is definable and therefore well suited for parody. It depicts audience members with expectations, who enter a cinema with an understanding of film as a medium. These audience members view film as a group of genres, each genre with its own genre standards, and are willing to voice their displeasure when these expectations are not met. The resulting effect is comic. It is a continuous intellectual mind-game. The actual-real-blood-and-flesh audience, in my circumstance being me, in your circumstance being you, is constantly aware of the film’s reflexivity, how it is commenting upon its own existence and creation, and said audience derives its pleasure and its laughs from possessing this privileged knowledge. We are all in on the game. We all know the secret to the magic trick. And yet, we still find ourselves being members of the audience, watching a film with a plot and a drama whose ending we are anticipating but are yet unaware of.  We probably do not foresee that the film is going to end with Cecilia returning to her old miseries and with Baxter reentering the silver screen, but if we were to pause the film, literally, and contemplate the plot’s direction and the dramatic questions it proposes we would realize the following: firstly, that the film’s genre although slippery and difficult to get a hold of, could most likely be defined as a Romantic Comedy inverted and flipped on its end. That is to say, instead of being about an unlikely couple meeting each other, disliking each other and then inevitably falling in and out of love until we end happily-ever-ever-after, the pattern is reversed. We begin with love-at-first-sight— with two people hopelessly desiring the other— instead of with loathing and conflict, and therefore the film must also end with the opposite. The pattern is reversed. The reversion to a degenerated and depressed life is predictable and makes sense considering the trajectory of the story’s arc. Secondly and along the same lines, a crucial dramatic question is whether and when Tom Baxter will reenter the silver screen. To have a satisfying resolution, the film must answer this question and have Tom choose and make a permanent decision—i.e., to live in the real world or  to solely exist fictionally. From there, we must ask what is most satisfying for the viewer’s experience. I would conclude as the film’s writers did, that it is more interesting visually and dramatically if Tom is able and forced to re-traverse the silver plane. But such a response is subjective.  The point being is that The Purple Rose of Cairo recognizes that the medium of film is reflexive and that it has an audience that is willing to question and analyze the medium of a film as a medium while taking part on its adventure and thrills. That is the secret to the beauty and humor of the film.