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Cinema; Culture; Spaces; Modernity; Identity; Social Ascension; Social inequality.
The current study analyses the illicit behavior patterns showed by the lead characters whose constitues the peripheral classes and middle class of the city of São Paulo displayed on Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz's filmography between 1949 and 1954. Highlights the dicotomy between the peripheric characters and the economic elite characters of the São Paulo's metropole, which are pictured as icons of citizenship and ethics. Manages the paulistana capital's space as the center of modernity and enterprising opportunities in the nation; a space of celebration, through public and private institutions, of that city as a place of social ascension through obtaince of purchase power. The historiography about the Companhia highlights their relevance in the projection of São Paulo metropole as the core of brazilian modernity, yet as a stage of deep social inequality. This inequalities and contradictions raises a question about the meaning of São Paulo metropole modernity in the fifties, costumized in ideological movement which nationality and identity were configured in the pattern of the local entrepeneurs, which produces cultural and knowledge institutions whose actions allowed them to self designate as the owners of progress and development in Brazil.