# Bagdad Cafe

Bagdad Cafe (sometimes Bagdad Café, titled Out of Rosenheim in Germany) is a 1987 English-language West German film directed by Percy Adlon. It is a comedy-drama set in a remote truck stop and motel in the Mojave Desert in the U.S. state of California. Inspired by Carson McCullers' 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 108 minutes in the German version and a shorter 95 minutes in the U.S. version. The song "Calling You", sung by Jevetta Steele and written by Bob Telson, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 61st Academy Awards.

## Plot

German tourists Jasmin Münchgstettner from Rosenheim and her husband fight while driving across the American southwest desert. She storms out of the car and makes her way to an isolated truck stop cafe, which is run by the tough-as-nails and short-tempered Brenda, whose own husband, after an argument out front, has also left. 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 and a glamorous tattoo artist. Brenda's son plays J. S. Bach preludes on the piano. With an ability to quietly empathize with everyone she meets at the cafe, and helped by a passion for cleaning and performing magic tricks, Jasmin gradually transforms the cafe and all the people in it.

## Cast

* Marianne Sägebrecht as Jasmin Münchgstettner
* CCH Pounder as Brenda
* Jack Palance as Rudi Cox
* Christine Kaufmann as Debby
* Monica Calhoun as Phyllis
* Darron Flagg as Salomo
* George Aguilar as Cahuenga
* G. Smokey Campbell as Sal
* Hans Stadlbauer as Herr Münchgstettner
* Alan S. Craig as Eric
* Apesanahkwat as Sheriff Arnie

## Production

The script was inspired by a road trip across U.S. Route 66 taken by director Percy Adlon and his wife Eleanor, a producer, in 1984. The town of Barstow, California reminded the couple of "purgatory." The German title is a joke based on Jasmin's lack of English: while she means to say that she is from Rosenheim, she actually says that she is "out of Rosenheim," with the title also making reference to Sidney Pollack's then recently released popular 1985 film Out of Africa. The film was shot in sequence.

## Reception

The film received positive reviews and critical acclaim. It holds an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 20 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.8/10.
Roger Ebert awarded the film 3½ stars in his review:
   [Percy Adlon] is 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.
The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.

## Awards and nominations

* 1988: won Best Foreign Language Film at the 23rd Guldbagge Awards
* 1988: won Bavarian Film Award Best Screenplay (Eleonore & Percy Adlon)
* 1988: won Ernst Lubitsch Award (Percy Adlon)
* 1989: nominated for the Oscar for Best Music, Original Song (Bob Telson) for the song "Calling You"
* 1989: won Amanda Best Foreign Feature Film (Percy Adlon)
* 1989: won Artios Best Casting for Feature Film, Comedy (Al Onorato and Jerold Franks)
* 1989: won César Award for Best Foreign Film (Percy Adlon)

## 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 multi-camera sitcom format, before a studio audience. The show did not attract a sizable audience and it was cancelled after two seasons.

## Location

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, 50 miles (80 km) west of the site of Bagdad. The cafe became a European tourist destination; to capitalize on the film, in 1995, when it was purchased by new owners, they 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", written by Bob Telson and sung by Jevetta Steele, and "Brenda, Brenda" with lyrics by Lee Breuer and music by Bob Telson, sung by Jevetta's sister 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 C major, no. 1, BWV 845; the C minor, BWV 846, no. 2; and the D major, no. 5, BWV 850.

## Home media

For the film's 30th anniversary in 2018, StudioCanal reissued Bagdad Cafe as a 4K digital restoration on DVD and Blu-ray. In April 2021, Shout! Factory re-released the film digitally.