why are French so nuts about this film?

Possibly the prevalence of *French* mementos reflects the fact that the French population has the highest percentage of movie buffs among all European countries? So they may like very much not only *this* movie, but many others, too, and perhaps if you travel to more locations that served as movie sets than just to the Bagdad Cafe, you might come across more signs of French enthusiasm for special other movies? Just an idea.

Regards, Rosabel

The French like to vacation in the US southwest--especially in nearby Death Valley--where Francaphones are as common as English-speakers. Incidentally, Germans prefer Southern California's Joshua Tree National Park.

Good question. I've heard about this movie for years before actually seeing it for the first time last night. All this time I had assumed it was going to be a French film with subtitles and was astonished to see that it is in fact and American movie taking place in the United States! Not only that, the lead protagonist is a German woman visiting the United States, not a French person in sight!





If you love and support Michael Jackson 100%, copy & paste this into your signature. We love MJ!

Hi I know that's an old stream but let me try to answer as a French.
First of all, the song has been a huge hit in France and the clip was was a great trailer for the movie. So i presume that many people watched the movie thanks to the song that was continuously played (radio, tv).
On top of that, it's a great movie, great story and great actors and we love that kind of movies in France (even if some big studios are trying to change the market).
You have to notice also that it's not an american movie but a german one; so it had his success in Europe before US.
And finally, I would say that a German woman with a tyrol folklore outfit in such landscape could easily symbolize in our profound psyche the meeting between european and american cultures. And you know how French love America, especially the west.
Hope it helped

J'aime ce film parcequ'il est poétique, humorless and the colors of the sky and this light on the visage of Jasmin, and this solitude on the road 66 and all these lifes that seem to delete in the torpor of the desert and Brenda and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqyX8_Y-jg4&list=PLUuHuR8uvbZQ-o-pu63rBadLVB5qwoDWe&ebc=ANyPxKoViC5E

When I was a kid, Bagdad Café has always been an enigma, I didn't see the film, but I knew about its most defining image of the two women embracing with that 'Calling You' song in the background. And this image was stuck in my mind for years and years before I finally saw it.

I can't explain the fascination, but Cinema is all about imagery and music and I guess the film offers both without trying too much and it's genuinely good. Now, there's no particular reason for this gem to stand higher than the others, but no reason for the opposite either, maybe it's because the film has the most unlikely setting, protagonists, and 'story' as far as the storyline goes, that at the end, it's impossible to compare it to any other movie, it's something that could have belonged to the 'New Hollywood' period, one of these 'slice of life' movies, like "The Last Picture Show" without the depressing 'end-of-an-era' theme.

Only what could have been a rather bleak and depressing material is handled with good heart and sweetness, the German woman represents a certain openness to new cultures, so typical of European mindset, and she manages to change the people around her, meeting more reistance from the hot-tempered and tyrannic Brenda. There's never a moment when you feel that the dynamics are forced, that it's something meant to mean or to advance the plot, even the feeling of passing time is imprecise, we just watch the German woman, who, in any other typical Hollywood (or mainstream commercial European) film, would play a lousy supporting role, we watch trying to fit in a strange world where she's estranged herself.

Today, there would have been some sexual undertones, the film would have been a comedy, a robbery would happen, anything for cheap thrills, because no director would believe it possible to maintain such plot absence for a while. And the most dramatic thing is that he would be right, because our ambitions in film-making became so high that we don't realize, they're reversely low. That the film was a box-office hit in Europe and a cult-classic in France shows that the 80's also belong to a time where miracles were possible, where it was still possible to reach the hearts of people with simple stories.

I don't even know if this deserves the epithet simple, maybe 'simple' stories are the most difficult to make, because there's nothing to hook our mind on, we just have to be witness human relationships going on, and trying to find how some scenes speak to us. And maybe it's the film's specific setting, in a motel in the middle of the desert, that allows it to speak universal statements about human relationships. Tell the story of a German Frau who leaves her husband and finds herself in a strange place, a true 'alien' in both meaning of the world, as a foreigner (she evens wears traditional German outfits) and as a persona alienated from her own world.

At the end, she's the one who proves that every occupant of the hotel was alienated by boredom, routine and the stress of their bossy owner, something that was progrssively destroying their lives. This is, in my opinion, the meaning of this magnificent embrace between the two women, it's a mutual 'thank you'.



Darth Vader is scary and I  The Godfather