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Cinema. Culture. Space. Modernity. Identity. Social Ascension. Social inequality
This work analyzes the images of modern Brazil produced by the filmography of the Vera Cruz Film Company from 1949 to 1954. It highlights the dichotomy between the peripheral characters and those of the economic elites of the São Paulo metropolis, which are portrayed as symbols of citizenship and ethics. It treats the space of the capital of São Paulo as the center of modernity and entrepreneurial opportunities in the country; of the celebration, through public and private institutions, of that city as the stage of social ascension through economic purchasing power. In this regard, the historiography of the Company highlights its importance in the projection of the São Paulo metropolis as the center of Brazilian modernity, but it was also a place of profound social inequalities, which questioned what the modernity of the São Paulo metropolis meant. 1950s, constituting an ideological movement in which nationality and identity characterized the patterns of local entrepreneurship, which had produced institutions of culture and knowledge to self-label the holders of progress and development in the country.