In 1965, Roberto Santos adapted a short novel by Guimaraes Rosa, A Hora e Vez de Augusto Matraga (Matraga), the only successful adaptation to cinema of a work by Guimaraes Rosa, the most important name in Brazilian literature in this century.
The success of an adaptation for TV of another Guimaraes Rosa's story prompted him to write a screenplay for the short novel Campo Geral, about a kid growing in the back-country of Brazil.
After months of trouble to obtain the rights, the project was abandoned, and he decided to tackle another myth of Brazilian literature, Machado de Assis.
His last movie, Quincas Borba, recreated Machado de Assis's fin-de-siecle universe in the troubled 1980s.
Roberto Santos died of a heart attack at the São Paulo airport in 1987, just after returning from the Festival of Gramado, where Quincas Borba was shown and heavily criticized by a clique of critics.