To allow input of UTF-8 characters (or characters with code > 127 in general, like accented characters), you have to enable F9 ⇒ Options ⇒ Display bits… ⇒ Full 8 bits input.
See ticket #1663. Panel state were not saved in mc 4.6 when Auto save setup is unchecked, in version 4.7 they are saved anyway. To avoid this, manually edit ~/.mc/ini and set
auto_save_setup_panels=0