With the increased repression of a new military regime in 1968, political necessity became the mother of cinematic invention-indirection and allegory. Azyllo Muito Louco (literally "a very crazy asylum") was a clever subversion of a classic novel by Machado de Assis. The story concerns a priest/psychiatrist who convinces the powers-that-be in a small Brazilian town that the mental health of its citizens must be attended to-then keeps changing the criteria for admission to his hospital so that, in the end, all are candidates for the loony bin. Echoing Brazil's ever-elastic political blacklist, the film also is a witty dissection of what happens when an institution loses direction and usefulness, but carries on regardless. Only then is it clear where the real powers be. In a film of radical experimentation, dos Santos uses the electronic music of Guilherme Magalhaes Vaz like an alienist-in the Brechtian sense.