The article examines the construction of the modern figure of Machado de Assis during the 1930's, focusing on the first film adaptation of one of his works - "Um apólogo - Machado de Assis", produced in 1939 by the Instituto Nacional de Cinema Educativo (National Institute of Educational Film, INCE), directed by Humberto Mauro, with the participation of Lúcia Miguel Pereira and Edgard Roquete Pinto. The short motion picture, the article argues, epitomizes the transformation of the unique man and writer, seen up to that point as one of a kind, into an exemplary Brazilian man, the writer of the Brazilian soul, attuned with the new roles prescribed by the Estado Novo (1937-1945) to literature and the literary.
"Um apólogo"; adaptation; film; cultural history; Estado Novo