A Civilized Diversion in an Industrial City: Movie-Going and International Prestige in São Paulo, Brazil, in the 1940s

In 1947, local journalists in São Paulo argued that movie ticket prices should be subject to government regulation because, like bread, water or electricity, it was a “basic necessity” for the residents of São Paulo. In a city better known for its industry than its leisure, movie-going was not just the most popular diversion; it was represented in the popular press as São Paulo’s only diversion. Although a cheap, sometimes dangerous amusement in the 1910s and 1920s, by the 1940s, movie-going marked São Paulo as a “civilized” and cultured city among a growing group of film intellectuals and critics in Brazil. More than a place to watch movies, cinemas were nodes of modernity that dotted the urban landscape. “Deluxe” cinemas in the upscale downtown of São Paulo boasted the newest projection technologies and the latest Hollywood films. Men never entered these cinemas without ties, and women never entered without gloves. Technologies, viewing habits, and exhibition practices consolidated São Paulo’s reputation as a movie-going city and elevated its imagined international prestige to the ranks of cities in Europe and the Americas. Much of this prestige was based on distancing São Paulo from Rio de Janeiro, the political and cultural capital of Brazil, and from images of hot, tropical beaches. Rather, journalists, exhibitors, and film critics compared São Paulo to New York, London, and Paris, as well as to neighboring Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Implicit in these comparisons were assertions of a city that was more civilized, European, and whiter than the rest of Brazil. Looking outside of Brazil to characterize São Paulo’s populace, film intellectuals placed São Paulo in an international circuit of cultural exchange and competition, and sought to affirm the city’s prominence as a movie-going capital in Latin America.