‘Station’ a Memorable Stop in Veteran Actress’ Journey

Walter Salles’ “Central Station,” about an embittered older woman suddenly handed the unwelcome responsibility of caring for a young boy, is bringing international ac claim and recognition to Fernanda Montenegro, widely regarded as Brazil’s greatest actress.

Montenegro is an actress of tremendous reserves who knows well the power of understatement and nuance. (“Central Station” opened Wednesday at selected theaters.)

Montenegro’s Dora is a ravaged-looking, mean-spirited, even hateful woman who ever so gradually regains her humanity. In person, Montenegro presents a startling contrast, for she’s a warm, vibrant woman who’s attractive, trim and chic. She has the youthful vitality of the committed, ceaselessly creative artist, and views the Doras of the world with understanding and compassion.

“Dora has no status in society,” explained Montenegro in hesitant but eloquent English during a recent interview at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “She is a retired schoolteacher who has no respect and whose pension would be about $100 a month.” To augment this pittance, Dora sets up shop in Rio’s huge Central Station as a letter writer for the illiterate. Many of the messages that she’s asked to inscribe strike her as rubbish to the extent that they deepen her bitterness.

Instead of mailing such letters, she stuffs them in a big sideboard drawer in her tiny apartment. “She feels she has the right to judge and will send only those letters that ring true,” said Montenegro. “I know this kind of woman, there’s no way out for her.”

Dora’s life undergoes the most reluctant of transformations, however, when one of her customers leaves her 10-year-old son, Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira), adrift in Rio without any friends or relatives.

Due to the chronic instability of the Brazilian film industry--the reason why Montenegro, long a stalwart of stage and TV, has made only a handful of films--it was several years before Salles was able to begin production. Salles, who wrote the film especially for Montenegro, finally was able to raise the money, landing five-time Oscar-winning international producer Arthur Cohn, and discovering De Oliveira shining shoes at the Rio airport.

“The intelligence and sincerity in this boy--very important,” said Montenegro. “There was a strange chemistry between us. Josue’s not a ‘Pixote,’ a kid of the streets, a delinquent. He’s a poor boy, a clean boy with a family. He works two or three hours a day to help out his family. But society gives no credit to such boys. He was not a miserable boy saved by being cast in the movie, but the family has benefited from it. Walter is now educating him, and he thinks he wants to be an actor.” (Interestingly, the film’s other key role, that of Dora’s wise neighbor, Irene, is played by the formidable Marilia Pera, unforgettable as the prostitute in “Pixote,” the landmark 1981 Hector Babenco film.)

“With Dora it is not a problem of maternity,” continued Montenegro, emphasizing that to see the film as about the awakening of maternal love is to miss its larger point. “Freud cannot help her. She is simply in need of human contact. It is a human impulse for her to want to find another shoulder to put her head on.”

Montenegro, a second-generation Brazilian, was born in Rio to a Portuguese father and an Italian mother. She describes her family as far from rich but not in want. Her father was a gifted designer who could create models of mechanical parts to be cast in a foundry. His services were especially in demand during World War II because he could replicate virtually any broken part in a machine or vehicle at a time when such items were almost impossible to replace.

Once he understood that his daughter was serious about becoming an actress, Montenegro’s father was supportive.

“I love cinema; I respect it as a great art form,” she said. “I am of the generation who grew up going to the movies. I saw Chaplin when I was 3. Such beautiful films from Hollywood, from Europe. Such great stars! Gerard Philippe, Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Louis Jouvet from France alone. Gregory Peck was a dream lover--and now I meet him! He saw our film and sent me a beautiful note.” But it was the stage that would bring Montenegro fame and fulfillment.

“Oscar Wilde said that a woman who has the courage to say her age is able to do everything. So when I tell you that I have been acting for 50 years, I also tell you that I will be 70 next year.” (You could believe that of Dora but not of Montenegro, who looks easily a decade younger.)

For Montenegro acting has long been a family affair. For decades she and her husband of 44 years, actor-director-producer Fernando Torres, had their own acting company and still mount their own productions. They always take their shows on tour to some two dozen key Brazilian cities. Most recently, they mounted a production of Chekhov’s “The Sea Gull,” in which Montenegro played Mme. Arkadina to her daughter Fernanda’s Nina. The Torres’ son Claudio is a director and set designer for the theater.

“I believe I am a woman with a vocation, and I say thanks to God for this,” she said. “If you are doing what you want with your life creatively, you have only half of your life--the personal--to concern yourself with.”