Quarter of century of the Central Station
On January 16, 1998, at the regional film festival in the Francophone part of Switzerland, the premiere of the Brazilian director Walter Salles' film "Central do Brasil (Central Station)" took place.
The idea for the film was prompted to Salles in early 1993 by his friend, the Polish-Brazilian artist Frans Krajcberg. This artist, back in 1985, became the subject of one of Salles' first documentaries. From that moment, a friendship began between the director and the artist. Frans Krajcberg gave Salles a letter received from a certain Maria do Socorro. The woman at that moment was serving a 21-year sentence in a prison in the city of Salvador, the Brazilian state of Bahia. She read an article in a magazine about Frans Krajcberg, a Polish Jew who lost his entire family during the Holocaust, miraculously survived in the ghetto, fled, fought against the Nazis in the Polish Armia Ludowa, and after the war received his higher education at Leningrad State University, and then continued studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. In the letter, Socorro expressed her admiration for Kreisberg's resilience and told her story.
After reading the letter, the director decided to make a short film based on it. He tracked down Maria do Socorro, contacted her by phone, and in September of that year, together with Krajcberg, went to meet her. The result of a conversation with Maria do Socorro was the documentary "Socorro Nobre", released in 1995.
However, one documentary film based on the history of Socorro was not enough for Salles, and he decided to make a full-length feature film. The creation of the script was entrusted to Marcos Bernstein, who by that time had participated in the creation of only one script. Bernstein, in turn, brought in co-authors of an absolute novice in screenwriting, Joao Emanuel Carneiro. Walter Salles entrusted one of the main roles in the film, 9-year-old Josue, to 11-year-old shoe shine Vinicius de Oliveira, who was selected from among 1,500 applicants and who not only had no experience in cinema, but even never in his life attended cinema.
Filming began on November 8, 1996 and ended in mid-February 1997. Significant financial assistance to the creation of the film was provided by the French Fonds Sud Cinema.
A month after the Swiss premiere, Walter Salles' film "Central Station" was presented to guests and participants of the international Berlin Film Festival, where it was awarded the main prize - the Golden Bear. The jury of the film festival, chaired by the famous British actor Ben Kingsley, preferred the Brazilian film, although among the contenders for the main prize were, in particular, "The Big Lebowski" by Joel Coen and "Good Will Hunting" by Gus Van Sant.
In early 1999, Walter Salles' "Central Station" was awarded the American Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. A little later, Salles' picture was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film nomination, but the American Film Academy preferred the Italian film masterpiece "La vita e bella (Life is Beautiful)" by Roberto Benigni. In the same 1999, "Central Station" was awarded the BAFTA British Academy Film Award, and the film "Life is Beautiful" also participated in the dispute for this award. In the same year, the film by Walter Salles was nominated for the Italian David di Donatello award, but the Italian Film Academy preferred the film "Train de vie (Train of Life)" by the Romanian film director Radu Michaileanu.
Professional film critics generally praised Walter Salles' Grand Central Station quite highly, although not without reservations. The most general assessment of the film was given by the guru of American film criticism, Roger Ebert. In his review dated December 25, 1998, he rated the film 3 out of 4 stars and wrote:
"The movie's success rests largely on the shoulders of Fernanda Montenegro, an actress who successfully defeats any temptation to allow sentimentality to wreck her relationship with the child. She understands that the film is not really about the boy's search for his father, but about her own reawakening. This process is measured out so carefully that we don't even notice the point at which she crosses over into a gentler person. ... It's strange about a movie like this. The structure intends us to be moved by the conclusion, but the conclusion is in many (not all) ways easy to anticipate. What moved me was the process, the journey, the change in the woman, the subtlety of sequences like the one where she falls for a truck driver who doesn't fall for her. It's in such moments that the film has its magic. The ending can take care of itself."
Another well-known American film critic, Entertainment Weekly columnist Owen Gleiberman, noted in his review:
"In outline, Central Station recalls many of the bogusly sticky adult-kid bonding tales that have been the bane of foreign cinema for too long, but Salles, like De Sica and Renoir, displays a pure and unpatronizing feel for the poetry of broken lives. His movie is really about that most everyday of miracles: the rebirth of hope."
Ordinary moviegoers rated Walter Salles' film "Central Station" very highly: 73% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world gave the film 8 or more points, and 26% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten". Box office receipts worldwide exceeded the film's budget by 7 times.
With that said, Walter Salles' "Central Station" has a FilmGourmand rating of 10,164, placing it at number 33 in the Golden Thousand. The Golden Thousand includes 4 Brazilian films. This list is headed by the "Central Station". This circumstance allows us to consider the film "Central Station" by Walter Salles the best film of Brazilian filmmakers.
