Steven Wyatt I discovered Bagdad Cafe by accident. The film I'd set out to see was sold out so, having schlepped into London, I reluctantly settled for something I'd never heard of showing on another screen. It was Bagdad Cafe. Subsequently I bought the VHS, lent it to someone - "You MUST see this movie!" - and never got it back. I bought the DVD, lent it to someone else, same result. I bought a second DVD and I am NEVER lending it out. Never ever.This is a spellbinding film, and like many of the reviewers here I can't quite work out what the spell is. It's a simple story: a German tourist finds herself dumped in the Nevada desert by her obnoxious husband and makes her way to an isolated, rundown motel and service station - the eponymous Bagdad Cafe. She makes friends with the people there. That's it. The isolation of the motel reflects the isolation of the motley collection of characters living there. Life seems to have passed them by just as the trucks on the highway pass them by. They are in the middle of nowhere, going nowhere, cast up on the edge of the flow like human flotsam. Each is lost in solitude and quiet desperation, stuck, trying to make the best of things. Jasmin, Marianne Sagebrecht's character, is also stranded by the abrupt and brutal break-up of her marriage. In a black irony she has grabbed not her own suitcase but her husband's, which contains his clothes and, surreally, a teach-yourself-magic kit. With a vulnerable, valiant and soul-wrenching dignity Jasmin sets about making the most of her bleak situation, a stranger in a very strange land. She rolls up her sleeves and cleans the place. She makes proper coffee, strong. Alone in her room, she starts teaching herself magic tricks from the kit as mile-long trains trundle by in the night.One by one, the other characters begin to thaw around her. Jasmin is the catalyst that brings them together. Artist and former Hollywood set-painter Rudi Cox (Jack Palance, in lizard-skin cowboy boots as reptilian as his eyes) falls helplessly in lust, then love, with this voluptuous Teuton who has appeared out of the desert like a perspiring valkyrie. The café owner Brenda (CCH Pounder, a world of helpless pain in her face) slowly lets go of the rage that is tearing her apart. She learns to smile again. Brenda's grown-up children, the Bach-worshipping son and the wayward daughter, are won over. The once-deserted café starts to attract a clientèle. Why? "It's magic," as Jasmin says, blue eyes glinting, prestidigitating eggs, coins and ribbons from the ears of laughing customers. Magic indeed. The film weaves an indefinable spell under skies cascading with colour, against a soundtrack that includes Bob Telson's Oscar-nominated 'Calling You'. Love, friendship and fellowship bloom in the desert. Hope blossoms in the sand. Director Percy Adlon (the screenplay was written by his wife Eleonore) has created a gentle, haunting, humanist jewel. And no, you can't borrow my copy.

nikolaspe The weird taste of Rosenheim coffee is the first of many symbols that build up the character of a grotesque stranger. To really understand the movie, the viewer has to have the experience in abandoning his or her comfort zone. Empathy is not only depicted by the plot, but rather by hidden symbols that reason the simple minded confusion, anger and intolerance. Gas and Oil Bagdad Cafe is physically shown as a dirty, remote desert location. However, throughout the story it transforms into prosperous oasis of human conscience. The song "Calling You" by Jevetta Steele doesn't represent abandonment, but the overall longing for the lost taste of Rosenheim coffee.

Michael Neumann The desert blooms, in more ways than one, when a hefty Bavarian häusfräu is abandoned by her husband on the doorstep of a run-down, off-highway pit stop somewhere in the Mojave Desert, geographically (and culturally) midway between Disneyland and Las Vegas. The fanciful Arabian Nights title offers a clue to director Percy Adlon's intentions, but in this trans-Atlantic fairy tale it takes a good German woman to bring magic (and efficiency) to the desert oasis, dazzling with her sleight-of-hand the gallery of local eccentrics (including an aging ex-Hollywood hippie, played with sensitive self-parody by Jack Palance) and gradually winning the trust and affection of the café's bitter proprietress. It's refreshing in this age of boilerplate buddy film cliché to see such an easy rapport allowed to develop between the two women, but the natural charm of the story is almost overwhelmed by the psychedelic complexity of Adlon's visual scheme. Like his earlier 'Sugarbaby' the film is stylized to distraction, with the unnatural lighting, distorted camera angles, and ostentatious editing functioning as camouflage, perhaps to mask the director's shallow perception of offbeat Americana: Jack Palance with a ponytail is a hoot, but the climactic song and dance routine is (to put it mildly) an embarrassment.

runamokprods A wonderful, funny, odd, and unique film. Strong acting all around (Jack Palance is amazing). Inventive use of distorted colors and changing camera speeds. A few moments get a bit precious, but generally one of the best uses I've seen of a slightly surreal style to tell a very touching, human story - an overweight, depressed Bavarian housewife is left stranded in the southwest desert by her husband, and slowly finds herself, and a home among the odd characters who live and work at the Bagdad Cafe.This is a case where brave film-making enhances rather than distracts from emotional involvement. The basic theme (we're all weird, and we all need somewhere to fit in) is nothing new, but the approach here makes it delightful and fresh.The original 15 minute longer 'director's cut' available on European DVDs does add some nice details, moments and filling out of characters. The film works fine in its shorter US version, and the Italian DVD of the director's cut I got was frustrating in that it had a a weaker visual transfer than the US DVD, and there were Italian subtitles you couldn't turn off, but I was glad to see it, and overall it's an even stronger film with the original material added back in.