| Bagdad Café | |
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French-language film poster |
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| Directed by | Percy Adlon |
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| Music by | Bob Telson |
| Cinematography | Bernd Heinl |
| Editing by | Norbert Herzner |
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| Distributed by | Island Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 12 November 1987 |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
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Bagdad Café (also known as Out of Rosenheim) is a 1987 German film directed by Percy Adlon. The film is a comedy set in a remote truck-stop café and motel in the Mojave Desert. The plot is centered around two women who have recently separated from their husbands, and the blossoming friendship which ensues. It ran 95 minutes in the U.S. and 108 minutes in the German version.
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The film begins with a fight between German tourist Jasmin Münchgstettner (Sägebrecht) from Rosenheim and her husband whilst they are driving across the desert. She storms out of the car and happens upon the truck stop run by the tough-as-nails and short tempered Brenda (Pounder), whose own husband, after an argument out front, is soon to leave her too. Jasmin takes a room at the adjacent motel, much to the skepticism of Brenda. 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). The film has a melodious backdrop in the form of J. S. Bach preludes recited on piano by Brenda's son (Darron Flagg). 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.
In 1990 the film was turned into a television series starring James Gammon, Whoopi Goldberg, Cleavon Little, and Jean Stapleton, with Stapleton as Jasmin and Goldberg as Brenda. In the TV version, Jasmin was no longer German. The series was shot in the conventional sitcom format, before a studio audience. The show did not obtain a sizable audience, being forced to compete with ABC's Top 30 hit Family Matters and was cancelled after one season.
Bagdad, California is the original setting (Bagdad, Arizona is an unrelated town). There was an actual Bagdad Cafe that existed in the '60s when U.S. Route 66 ran through the town; the town has since vanished but the cafe itself is still open for business. The site is marked by a railroad siding and a single tree.
The film was shot at what was then the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs, California, 50 miles west of the original site of Bagdad on old U.S. 66. Since then, the café has become something of a tourist destination, and has changed its name to the Bagdad Café. A small notice board on the café wall features snapshots of the film's cast and crew.
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 two principal piano pieces performed by Darron Flagg are the "C Major Prelude No. 1" and "D Major Prelude No. 5" from Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier.
The film was released in the United States with a PG rating. The film is rated M in New Zealand as it contains low level offensive language, and is also rated M in Australia, where it was originally rated PG.