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Percy Adlon (Germany, 1935) started out in theater and with TV documentaries.
He entered cinema with a documentary on the writer Walser, who was discovered
in a madhouse
(Der Vormund Und Sein Dichter/ The Guardian and the Poet, 1978).
Adlon rose to prominence with films that he directed, scripted and funded in
total autonomy.
Herr Kischott (1980)
Celeste (1981) is a portrait of
Proust's housekeeper and focuses on the writer's last years.
Letze Funf Tage/ Last Five Days (1982) is about the last five days of
a real-life anti-Nazi conspirator,
Sophie Scholl, who in prison bonds with a fellow inmate.
Schaukel/ The Swing (1983)
He then made the tender and surreal fairy tale of
Zuckerbaby/ Sugarbaby (1985).
A fat and ugly, lonely and depressed woman falls in love with a subway driver, stalks and spies on him to devise a scientific conquest strategy: she succeeds and establishes a joyful relationship. The wife attacks her and takes her husband back (she tries again with someone else).
Herschel und die Musik der Sterne/ Herschel and the Music of the Stars (1986)
Bagdad Cafe' (1987) is a fairy tale set in a desolate landscape and shot in vivid colors. The characters are part of the desert. The German tourist is an ugly flower that sprouts suddenly in the desert and changes forever its panorama.
A German couple is having an argument in a street in the middle of the desert.
The man is getting abusive.
Eventually, the woman gets out of the car, picks up a suitcase from the trunk
of the car and walks away. The man drives away.
The woman, who is fat and ugly but well-dressed in German fashion, walks
for a long time under scorching sunshine until she reaches a gas station,
which is also a motel and a cafe', all of them owned by an energetic and
grumpy black woman, Brenda. Brenda is having an argument with her
good-for-nothing husband: he does nothing while she has to take care of
business, of two children and of a grandchild. The man threatens to leave
and she encourages him to. When he finally leaves, she cries.
The German tourist shows up on foot and asks for a room.
Brenda is surprised because it's virtually impossible to get there without
a vehicle. Brenda is surprised also because the white woman seems to be
too well dressed and well behaved for her motel.
The room is in fact ugly and dusty. The German woman, Jasmin, is disappointed
when she opens her suitcase and discovers that she picked her husband's
suitcase instead of her own: she only has men's clothes.
The cafe' has no coffee because the coffee machine is broken.
It seems to have pretty much nothing. The whole place is a mess.
Brenda's son is endlessly practicing at the piano. Her daughter is a party girl.
Brenda has one assistant who takes care of the cafe's restaurant.
And she has a middle-age neighbor who is like family, Rudi, who spends most of his time
at the cafe'.
The following morning Brenda, who is constantly in a bad mood, walks into
Jasmin's room to clean it and sees all the men's stuff. She gets suspicious
and calls the sheriff. The sheriff arrives and checks Jasmin's papers: there
is nothing wrong about her. Meanwhile, Jasmin has found the cleaning tools
that Brenda left in her room and is cleaning the room like it never has been.
Jasmin tries to befriend the family despite Brenda's hostile attitude.
The only one who is friendly to Jasmin is Rudi who seems attracted to her.
Day after day Jasmin becomes closer to Brenda's children and one day, while
Brenda is out running errands, organizes and cleans up Brenda's office.
Brenda gets furious but the following day her attitude changes.
Meanwhile we have also met two other characters: a woman (a tattoo maker, and possibly a prostitute)
who basically lives at the motel and a backpacker who pitches his tent nearby
and plays with a boomerang.
Rudi tells Jasmin that he is a painter and invites her to his bungalow to
paint a portrait of her.
Brenda starts liking Jasmin who starts helping out with the children and the
restaurant. Brenda found a magic set in her husband's suitcase and has been
teaching herself magic tricks. She starts performing them for the cafe's
patrons and the word spreads about the Bagdad Cafe's show.
The cafe' is now full all the time. Meanwhile, Jasmin keeps posing for
Rudi, each time a little more undressed.
Brenda and Jasmin are now best friends.
News of the magic show at Bagdad Cafe' spreads rapidly. The sheriff learns
of it from the radio. He knows that Jasmin only has a tourist visa.
The sheriff shows up and tells Jasmin that she has to leave the country.
Brenda is now sorry that her friend is leaving, perhaps forever.
The village becomes again a ghost town. Everybody is apathetic again.
But one day Jasmin returns, dressed the same way and again dragging the same suitcase in the sand.
Bagdad Cafe` resumes the magic show, which is now a full-fledged cabaret
skit (a lengthy musical number).
Brenda reconciles with her husband (who has been watching the whole saga from
a safe distance with binoculars).
The painter asks Jasmin to marry him so that
she won't need a visa anymore. Jasmin replies that she needs to talk to Brenda.
He then directed:
Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989),
Salmonberries (1991),
Younger and Younger (1993),
In der glanzvollen Welt des Hotel Adlon/ The Glamorous World of the Adlon Hotel (1996),
Die Strausskiste/ Forever Flirt (1999),
Hawaiian Gardens (2001)
and
Orbela's People (2007).
Adlon co-directed Mahler on the Couch (2010) with his son Felix.
Adlon died in 2024.
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