The SPN's directives for national cinema left a decade-long gap in the evolution of the Portuguese urban comedy. Aldeia da Roupa Branca (1939) and João Ratão (1940) are the first and last of the rural Portuguese comedies before the genre moves back to Lisbon to pick up where A Canção de Lisboa left off in 1933. Familiar elements of Cottinelli's film make their way into Portuguese comedies of the 1940s. In terms of setting and soundtrack, we recognize urban landscapes, the interior Lisbon patio where neighbors mind everyone's else's business, marches and processions, spontaneous musical interludes, a singing contest, and the Lisbon fado; regarding characterization and themes: “a tia ridícula, o velho pernóstico, e o estroina generoso” [the ridiculous aunt, the pedantic old man, and the big spender].

M. Félix Ribeiro remarks that these comedies of the early 1940s “são todos eles filmes simples, sorridentes” [are all simple, happy films] that do not try to make a statement about politics, society or intellectual issues, because their “intuito primeiro” [first instinct] – following the models of European and American comedies of the era – “era distrair ou alegrar os espectadores” [was to distract or cheer up the audience]. Nevertheless, these films focus on the social aspirations and disappointments of a stagnant lower class that sets its sights on moving up. Class mobility, I argue, concerns politics and society. And whereas the Portuguese comedies may not appear to provoke a dialogue about these issues in any pedagogical or intellectual manner, the mere fact that social class often factors into the plots of these films at the very least problematizes the question of contemporary social inequity by portraying the interactions between the rich and the poor in Lisbon. And by doing so, these films expose the construction of class identity and the arbitrary nature of class-based difference.

Bénard da Costa comments that many of the characters in the Portuguese comedies of the 1940s live hand-to-mouth in boarding houses, hoping to marry out of their socioeconomic class. In some ways, the repetition of urban class dynamics in these films renders the issue apolitical: a peculiarity of life in the big city.