''Bagdad Cafe'' (sometimes ''Bagdad Café'', titled ''Out of Rosenheim'' in Germany) is a 1987 English-language West German film directed by
Percy Adlon
Paul Rudolf Parsifal "Percy" Adlon (; born 1 June 1935) is a German director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his film ''Bagdad Cafe''. He is associated with the New German Cinema movement (ca. 1965–1985), and has been noted f ...
. It is a
comedy-drama
Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...
set in a remote
truck stop
A truck stop, known as a service station in the United Kingdom, and a travel center by major chains in the United States, is a commercial facility which provides refueling, rest (parking), and often ready-made food and other services to motori ...
and
motel
A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries ...
in the
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in ...
in the U.S. state of
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. Inspired by
Carson McCullers
Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, ''The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'' (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits ...
' novella ''
The Ballad of the Sad Café'' (1951), the film centers on two women who have recently separated from their husbands, and the blossoming friendship that ensues. It runs 95 minutes in the U.S. and 108 minutes in the German version.
Plot
German tourists Jasmin Münchgstettner (Sägebrecht) from
Rosenheim
Rosenheim is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is an independent city located in the centre of the district of Rosenheim (Upper Bavaria), and is also the seat of its administration. It is located on the west bank of the Inn at the confluence of the ...
and her husband fight while driving across the desert. She storms out of the car and makes her way to the isolated truck stop, which is run by the tough-as-nails and short-tempered Brenda (Pounder), whose own husband, after an argument out front, is soon to leave as well. Jasmin takes a room at the adjacent motel. Initially suspicious of the foreigner, Brenda eventually befriends Jasmin and allows her to work at the cafe.
The cafe is visited by an assortment of colorful characters, including a strange ex-Hollywood set-painter (Palance) and a glamorous tattoo artist (Kaufmann). Brenda's son (Darron Flagg) plays
J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wo ...
preludes on the piano. With an ability to quietly empathize with everyone she meets at the cafe, helped by a passion for cleaning and performing magic tricks, Jasmin gradually transforms the cafe and all the people in it.
Cast
*
Marianne Sägebrecht
Marianne Sägebrecht (; born 27 August 1945) is a German film actress.
Her background included stints as a medical lab assistant and magazine assistant editor before she found her calling in show business. Claiming to be inspired by Bavaria's ma ...
as Jasmin Münchgstettner
*
CCH Pounder
Carol Christine Hilaria Pounder (born December 25, 1952) is a Guyanese-American actress. She has received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for her roles in ''The X-Files'', '' ER'', ''The Shield'', and ''The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agenc ...
as Brenda
*
Jack Palance
Jack Palance ( ; born Volodymyr Palahniuk ( uk, Володимир Палагню́к); February 18, 1919 – November 10, 2006) was an American actor known for playing tough guys and villains. He was nominated for three Academy Awards, all fo ...
as Rudi Cox
*
Christine Kaufmann
Christine Maria Kaufmann (; 11 January 1945 – 28 March 2017) was a German-Austrian actress, author, and businesswoman. The daughter of a German father and a French mother, she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress f ...
as Debby
*
Monica Calhoun
Monica Calhoun (born July 29, 1971) is an American film and television actress. Calhoun is best known for her roles in the films ''Bagdad Cafe'', ''The Players Club'', '' The Salon'', '' The Best Man'', and its sequel ''The Best Man Holiday''. Ca ...
as Phyllis
*Darron Flagg as Salomo
*
George Aguilar
George Aguilar is a Mescalero Apache and Pascua Yaqui actor. He is best known for his roles as Cahuenga in '' Bagdad Café'', Johnny Sassamon in ''The Scarlet Letter'', Grandfather Stone in Dreamkeeper, Big Foot in '' Into the West'', and Kaw ...
as Cahuenga
*G. Smokey Campbell as Sal
*Hans Stadlbauer as Herr Münchgstettner
*Alan S. Craig as Eric
*
Apesanahkwat
Apesanahkwat (born January 19, 1949) is a Native American tribal leader and a film and television actor.
Apesanahkwat served as tribal chairman of the Menominee Indian Reservation eight times. He served in the United States Marine Corps and is ...
as Sheriff Arnie
Production
The script was inspired by a road trip across
U.S. Route 66
U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) was one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The h ...
taken by director
Percy Adlon
Paul Rudolf Parsifal "Percy" Adlon (; born 1 June 1935) is a German director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his film ''Bagdad Cafe''. He is associated with the New German Cinema movement (ca. 1965–1985), and has been noted f ...
and his wife Eleanor, a producer, in 1984.
The town of
Barstow, California
Barstow is a city in San Bernardino County, California, in the Mojave Desert of Southern California. Located in the Inland Empire region of California, the population was 25,415 at the 2020 census. Barstow is an important crossroads for the I ...
reminded the couple of "purgatory". The film was shot in sequence.
Reception
The film received positive reviews and critical acclaim.
It holds an 85% approval rating on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on 20 reviews, with a
weighted average
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
of 6.8/10.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
awarded the film 3 and ½ stars in his review:
" ercy Adlonis saying something in this movie about Europe and America, about the old and the new, about the edge of the desert as the edge of the American Dream. I am not sure exactly what it is, but that is comforting; if a director could assemble these strange characters and then know for sure what they were doing in the same movie together, he would be too confident to find the humor in their situation. The charm of "Bagdad Cafe" is that every character and every moment is unanticipated, obscurely motivated, of uncertain meaning and vibrating with life".
The film was successful at the European box office, and was one of the most financially successful foreign-language productions in the U.S. at that time, grossing $3.59 million.
Awards and nominations
* 1988: won Best Foreign Language Film at the
23rd Guldbagge Awards
* 1988: won
Bavarian Film Award
The Bavarian Film Awards (german: Bayerischer Filmpreis) have been awarded annually since 1979 by the state government of Bavaria in Germany for “exceptional achievement in German filmmaking.” Along with the German Film Awards, these are the ...
Best Screenplay (Eleonore & Percy Adlon)
* 1988: won Ernst Lubitsch Award (Percy Adlon)
* 1989: nominated for the
Oscar
Oscar, OSCAR, or The Oscar may refer to:
People
* Oscar (given name), an Irish- and English-language name also used in other languages; the article includes the names Oskar, Oskari, Oszkár, Óscar, and other forms.
* Oscar (Irish mythology), ...
for Best Music, Original Song (
Bob Telson
Robert Eria Telson (born May 14, 1949) is an American composer, songwriter, and pianist best known for his work in musical theater and film, for which he has received Tony, Pulitzer, and Academy Award nominations.
Biography
Robert Eria Telson wa ...
) for the song "
Calling You
"Calling You" is a song from the 1987 film, ''Bagdad Cafe''. It was originally recorded by Jevetta Steele. Bob Telson, the songwriter, also recorded his version. Both versions appeared on the movie soundtrack. The song was nominated for the A ...
"
* 1989: won
Amanda Best Foreign Feature Film (Percy Adlon)
* 1989: won
Artios
The Casting Society, formerly known as Casting Society of America (CSA), was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1982 as a professional society of about 1,200 casting directors and associate casting directors for film, television, theatre, and ...
Best Casting for Feature Film, Comedy (Al Onorato and Jerold Franks)
* 1989: won
César Award for Best Foreign Film
This is the list of winners and nominees of the César Award for Best Foreign Film (french: César du meilleur film étranger).
Winners and nominees
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
Awards by nation
Notes
See also
*Lumières A ...
(Percy Adlon)
Television series
In 1990 the film was re-created as a
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
series starring
James Gammon
James Richard Gammon (April 20, 1940 – July 16, 2010) was an American actor, known for playing grizzled " good ol' boy" types in numerous films and television series.
Gammon portrayed Lou Brown, the manager in the movies '' Major League'' and ...
,
Whoopi Goldberg
Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955), known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg (), is an American actor, comedian, author, and television personality.Kuchwara, Michael (AP Drama Writer)"Whoopi Goldberg: A One-Woman Character Parade". ' ...
,
Cleavon Little
Cleavon Jake Little (June 1, 1939 – October 22, 1992) was an American stage, film, and television actor. He began his career in the late 1960s on the stage. In 1970, he starred in the Broadway production of '' Purlie'', for which he earned both ...
, and
Jean Stapleton
Jean Stapleton (born Jeanne Murray; January 19, 1923 – May 31, 2013) was an American character actor, character actress of stage, television and film.
Stapleton was best known for playing Edith Bunker, the perpetually optimistic and dev ...
, with Stapleton as the abandoned tourist, and Goldberg as the restaurant operator. In the TV version the tourist was no longer from Germany. The series was shot in the conventional
multi-camera
The multiple-camera setup, multiple-camera mode of production, multi-camera or simply multicam is a method of filmmaking and video production. Several cameras—either film or professional video cameras—are employed on the set and simultaneous ...
sitcom
A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...
format, before a studio audience. The show did not attract a sizable audience and it was cancelled after two seasons.
Location
![Bagdad Cafe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Bagdad_Cafe._%284054050230%29.jpg)
The setting,
Bagdad, California, is a former town on U.S. Route 66. After being
bypassed by
Interstate 40 in 1973, it was abandoned and eventually razed. While the town had a "Bagdad Cafe", the film was shot at the then Sidewinder Cafe in
Newberry Springs
Newberry Springs is an unincorporated community in the western Mojave Desert of Southern California, located at the foot of the Newberry Mountains in San Bernardino County, California, United States.
Newberry Spring is a spring that in the 19t ...
, west of the site of Bagdad. The cafe has become something of a tourist destination; to capitalize on the film, it changed its name to Bagdad Cafe. A small noticeboard on the cafe wall features snapshots of the film's cast and crew.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack features the songs "
Calling You
"Calling You" is a song from the 1987 film, ''Bagdad Cafe''. It was originally recorded by Jevetta Steele. Bob Telson, the songwriter, also recorded his version. Both versions appeared on the movie soundtrack. The song was nominated for the A ...
", written by
Bob Telson
Robert Eria Telson (born May 14, 1949) is an American composer, songwriter, and pianist best known for his work in musical theater and film, for which he has received Tony, Pulitzer, and Academy Award nominations.
Biography
Robert Eria Telson wa ...
and sung by
Jevetta Steele
Jevetta Steele (born November 11, 1963) is an American R&B and gospel music singer.
Early years
Born and raised in Gary, Indiana, Steele eventually migrated to Minneapolis, Minnesota to become a criminal lawyer. Steele later embarked upon a sol ...
, and "Brenda, Brenda" with lyrics by
Lee Breuer
Esser Leopold Breuer (February 6, 1937 – January 3, 2021) was an American playwright, theater director, academic, educator, filmmaker, poet, and lyricist. Breuer taught and directed on six continents.
Career
Breuer was a founding co-artistic ...
and music by
Bob Telson
Robert Eria Telson (born May 14, 1949) is an American composer, songwriter, and pianist best known for his work in musical theater and film, for which he has received Tony, Pulitzer, and Academy Award nominations.
Biography
Robert Eria Telson wa ...
, sung by Jearlyn Steele, featuring the harmonica of William Galison, and also has a track in which the director narrates the story, including the film's missing scenes.
The principal piano pieces, performed by Darron Flagg, are preludes from Book I of
Bach's ''
The Well-Tempered Clavier
''The Well-Tempered Clavier'', BWV 846–893, consists of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard by Johann Sebastian Bach. In the composer's time, ''clavier'', meaning keyboard, referred to a variety of in ...
'': the C major, no. 1, BWV 845; the C major,
BWV 846, no. 2; and the D major, no. 5, BWV 850.
Home media
For the film's 30th anniversary in 2018,
StudioCanal
StudioCanal S.A.S. (formerly known as Le Studio Canal+, Canal Plus, Canal+ Distribution, Canal+ D.A., Canal+ Production, and Canal+ Image and also known as StudioCanal International) is a French film production and distribution company that owns ...
reissued ''Bagdad Cafe'' as a
4K digital restoration on DVD and Blu-ray.
In April 2021,
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an American home video and music company founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases include previously released feature films, classic and contemporary television series, animation, live music, and comedy ...
re-released the film digitally.
References
External links
*
*
Bagdad Cafe' at
AllMovie
AllMovie (previously All Movie Guide) is an online database with information about films, television programs, and screen actors. , AllMovie.com and the AllMovie consumer brand are owned by RhythmOne.
History
AllMovie was founded by popular-cult ...
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bagdad Cafe
1987 films
1987 comedy-drama films
West German films
Films directed by Percy Adlon
Films set in deserts
Films set in California
Films shot in California
Films shot in the Mojave Desert
Best Foreign Film César Award winners
Best Foreign Film Guldbagge Award winners
1980s English-language films
English-language German films
1980s feminist films
Films adapted into television shows
1980s female buddy films
Foreign films set in the United States