Sidewalk Stories

1989's SIDEWALK STORIES is a silent film, shot in black and white.  Its characters speak, but the audience is not given dialogue title cards.  For a story that details the plight of the homeless in New York City, this is appropriate and possibly more effective than if speech were audible.  Writer/director/star Charles Lane perhaps inadvertently makes this point with the film's final scene, when at last we hear the desperate pleas of panhandlers, of those looking for but a quarter or the remainder of a passerby's sandwich.

One of those unfortunates is a young artist (Lane) who draws caricatures on a street in Greenwich Village.  He doesn't make very much. He's bullied by other artists.  He's a squatter in an abandoned church that is slated for demolition. One night he witnesses the murder of a man in an alley.   A young child is in a carriage nearby.  The artist brings the child home, somehow managing to care for her despite a life of squalor.  His heart is as big as Brooklyn.

The artist once drew the likeness of an attractive, wealthy young woman (Sandye Wilson) who later takes pity on him when she catches him shoplifting baby clothes from the store she manages (owns?).  She also becomes his girlfriend, slowly.  When they finally kiss, it is a series of unsure pecks that mimic the frame rate of the old silent films.  Their relationship is a bright light in the artist's very bleak life, and shown to be quite innocent and pure (aside from a somewhat out of place fantasy sequence).

That child, though, gives the artist a true reason to push through each dim day.  We've seen this story countless times, including in the old Charlie Chaplin films like THE KID, which SIDEWALK STORIES is clearly emulating.  The silent treatment again makes such a story even more poignant.  It's amazing how original and urgent this time worn tale seems under these conditions.  As Roger Ebert stated, the movie involves viewers more as we have to work a bit harder.  To fill in the missing sounds.  Your lip reading skills will get a workout during this movie, but what matters is the context, and no scene is too difficult to figure.

You might think that color photography and the constant din of the city (there are periodic sounds to be heard) would make a story of urban blight more effective, but Lane has created a wondrous experiment that proves otherwise and transcends any auteur posturing.  SIDEWALK STORIES plays like a flip through a book of old, rough NYC, with gorgeous, sharp camera work by Bill Dill (and kudos to the restoration team), but this no mere coffee table fodder.   Every image, everything Lane includes in the frame contributes to a strong emotional connection.  His screenplay also includes a great bit of slapstick that is also heartbreaking - when the artist and child visit the girlfriend for dinner at her apartment, they find a bathtub and quickly, secretly each take baths.  A rare luxury for them.  There but for the grace of God go we.