SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A long-established piece of wisdom in Hollywood says that if you have robbed a bank or sold war secrets to the enemy, or even if you’ve just embezzled some company funds, then you should pack your stuff and move to Brazil.

According to my brief detective work, perhaps the first film to reference the peculiar attraction that Brazil holds for international runaways was “The Lavender Hill Mob,” a 1951 British comedy starring Alec Guinness. His character steals one million pounds in gold from the Bank of England, melts the bars into miniature Eiffel Towers and comes “straight on to Rio de Janeiro. Gay, sprightly, land of mirth and social ease.”

A year later, the Hollywood drama “5 Fingers” presented an ambitious British Embassy valet who decides to sell secrets to the Nazis. James Mason’s character intends to collect 200,000 pounds in 12 weeks, and then dash into “a new life. A new name.” Alongside his partner, a ruined countess portrayed by Danielle Darrieux, he plans to escape “the wars, the intrigues, fears,” and to become like the elegant man he once saw on the balcony of a Brazilian villa, high in the mountainside above the harbor. “He seemed close enough to touch, and yet he was beyond the reach of anyone.”

It’s not surprising that so many fictional stories revolve around characters fleeing here to escape the law. Today Brazil does have an extradition treaty with the United States, but it has been in effect only since 1964. We had no similar treaty with Britain until 1997, thus allowing Ronald Biggs — who had a role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963 and escaped from a London prison in 1965 — to live here in freedom for decades.