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.

adventurer_ci I started watching this movie on television half way through and was immediately captivated . It was interrupted by commercials all the time and that irritated me big deal. After it got finished I searched the web to see where I can watch it from the beginning and found on YouTube, in a foreign language though, but the one I speak. I loved absolutely everything about this movie. Refreshing change from clichéd US films of the time.A radiant, oddball comedy-drama about the relationship.This sparkling little gem is not just a hilarious and touching account of the friendship that develops between two women of jarringly different cultures.It also offers a renewed, endearingly quirky vision of America as the land of opportunity, not in the economic sense, but as a place with plenty of room for self-discovery and individuality.

paul2001sw-1 An unlikely visitor arrives in an unhappy community, and, after a false start, brings happiness to them and to herself. Such an outline of Percy Adlon's 'Bagdad Cafe' sounds almost conventional; but it wouldn't prepare you for the sheer weirdness of the characters or the setting (this is Bagdad, Nevada) or for the fantastical element that develops as the film progresses; nor for the sudden song and dance routine that breaks out before the movie ends. Even the theme song, which features prominently throughout, is frankly a little odd. The net result is certainly original, and not without charm; it never feels forced, but it is deliberately peculiar, and how much you like it will probably depend on how easy you find it to fall into its world. Adlon himself is Bavarian (as his the lead character); but if this is true Bavarian humour, it's certainly very strange.

Jan Geerling Extremely entertaining movie with a very positive message to those who don't feel life makes any sense and without this notion still can do something about it, even in the American desert. Life offers us all these options if we stay true to ourselves and don't let ourselves drag into negativism and routine. This movie is highly recommendable for all ages and social levels and for people who lost any hope on a better future. Curious coincidence that I saw this movie on the day Jack Palance died without knowing it before. Jack died on November 10 2006 and I had the impression he was very much himself in this movie. Truly comical and absurd the presence of the Australian hitch hiker with his boomerang..