During the Estado Novo, Portuguese cinema played an important role in the construction and dissemination of a standardised national identity. Films such as A Canção de Lisboa (1933), O Pátio das Cantigas (1942), and O Leão da Estrela (1947) are often regarded as popular comedies, but they also functioned as vehicles for a particular representation of a “typical” Lisbon: picturesque neighbourhoods, close-knit communities, everyday humour, and a degree of social harmony that rarely reflected the urban reality of the time.
These productions belong to what film historians refer to as the comédia à portuguesa (“Portuguese-style comedy”), a genre that was, directly or indirectly, shaped by the regime. Although they were not always explicit propaganda, they benefited from a political and institutional environment that favoured content aligned with the values of the Estado Novo: social order, traditional morality, the celebration of the people as a homogeneous entity, and the absence of structural conflict. State support, through funding mechanisms, censorship, and control over distribution, helped consolidate this form of representation as the dominant one.
Much like the reorganised popular festivities and the “invented traditions” described by Eric Hobsbawm, these films helped to fix a recognisable and repeatable image of what it meant to be Portuguese. Rather than merely portraying reality, they created a cultural model: a staged, choreographed, and emotionally coherent Lisbon that could be readily internalised by audiences. In this sense, cinema functioned as a symbolic extension of the same process identified by Ernest Gellner: the construction of a shared culture necessary for the consolidation of a modern national identity.
The documentary by Pedro Éfe, José de Matos-Cruz, and António de Macedo, available through the RTP Archive, and featuring contributions from João Bénard da Costa, Fernando Rosas, and others, offers further insight into the history of Portuguese cinema.
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