Bagdad Café
8.2 /10 1 Votes
3.5/4 Roger Ebert 88% Rotten Tomatoes Genre Comedy, Drama Music director Bob Telson Country West Germany
United States | 7.5/10 IMDb 3.8/5 AlloCine Director Percy Adlon Featured song Calling You Duration Language German
English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Release date 12 November 1987 (1987-11-12) (Europe)
22 April 1988 (1988-04-22) (US) Writer Eleonore Adlon (screenplay), Percy Adlon (screenplay), Percy Adlon (story), Christopher Doherty (screenplay) Initial release November 12, 1987 (West Germany) Cast Marianne Sägebrecht (Jasmin Münchgstettner), CCH Pounder (Brenda), Jack Palance (Rudi Cox), Christine Kaufmann (Debby), Monica Calhoun (Phyllis), Darron Flagg (Salomo)Similar movies The Grey , Walkabout , Into the Wild , In July , Lost Highway , Into the Grizzly Maze Tagline Off Route 66 between Vegas and nowhere a little magic\'s going on... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bagdad Café (also known as Out of Rosenheim) is a 1987 German film directed by Percy Adlon. It is a comedy set in a remote truck-stop café and motel in the Mojave Desert in the US state of California. It 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.
Contents
- Bagdad cafe official trailer 1 jack palance movie 1987 hd
- Plot
- Cast
- Reception
- Awards and nominations
- Television series
- Location
- Soundtrack
- References
Bagdad cafe official trailer 1 jack palance movie 1987 hd
Plot
German tourists Jasmin Münchgstettner (Sägebrecht) 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 café.
The café 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 preludes on the piano. With an ability to quietly empathize with everyone she meets at the café, helped by a passion for cleaning and performing magic tricks, Jasmin gradually transforms the café and all the people in it.
Cast
Reception
The film had positive reviews. It holds an 88% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The film was successful at the box office, with a US gross of $3.59 million.
Awards and nominations
Television series
In 1990 the film was re-created as a television series starring James Gammon, Whoopi Goldberg, Cleavon Little, and Jean Stapleton, 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 sitcom format, before a studio audience. The show did not attract a sizable audience, being aired against ABC's more successful series, Family Matters, and it was cancelled after one season.
Location
The setting, Bagdad, California is a former town on U.S. Route 66. After being bypassed by Interstate 40, it was abandoned and eventually razed. While the town had a "Bagdad Café", the film was shot at then then-Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs, California, 50 miles west of the site of Bagdad. The café has become something of a tourist destination and to capitalize on the movie it changed its name to the Bagdad Café. A small notice board on the café wall features snapshots of the film's cast and crew.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack has the song "Calling You," by Jevetta Steele, and has a track in which the director narrates the story, including the film's missing scenes.
The principal piano pieces heard, performed by Darron Flagg, are preludes from Book I of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier: the C major, no. 1, BWV 845; the C minor, BWV 846, no. 2; and the D major, no. 5, BWV 850.
Harmonica was performed by William Galison.