The film is a comment on urban homelessness, a topic just as timely now as then (or, indeed when Chaplin made The Kid ). A Greenwich Village street artist (Lane) who sketches portraits and is squatting in a condemned building, takes in a toddler (Lane's real-life daughter, Nicole Alysia) whose father has been murdered. Also in the cast were Sandye Wilson as "Young Woman", Darnell Williams as "Father" and Tula Hoosier as "Mother."
Sidewalk Stories was inspired by an encounter and conversation that Lane had with a homeless man after leaving the Sugar Ray Leonard - Donny Lalonde fight. "I had been thinking about making a film about a serious issue embodied in a social comedy, and Sidewalk Stories was born out of that." Lane later said.
The film was made in February 1989, after a two-week rehearsal, because it was the coldest winter to date in New York City. "We were filming in 2-degree weather. There was no time to improvise." Only two weeks after filming wrapped, Lane submitted a cut of the film for submission to the Cannes Film Festival and was accepted. On May 11th, it screened at Cannes, which Lane found to be "agony" because some people walked out and he couldn't tell if those who remained liked the film or not. At the end, however, the applause lasted for fifteen minutes, which moved Lane to tears. He would later walk away with the Prix du Publique award and go on to win awards from several countries, including Sweden and Spain.
The film equally won acclaim from critics when it opened in New York on November 3, 1989 and Los Angeles a week later. Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times that while the film was sentimental, "it is saved from seeming saccharine by the hard facts of modern life." While watching Sidewalk Stories , Roger Ebert was fascinated at how watching a silent film heightened his attention. "I think perhaps the silent format inspires us to participate more directly in the movie. A sound film comes to us, approaches us - indeed, it sometimes assaults us from the screen. But a silent film stays up there on the glowing wall, and we rise up to meet it. We take our imagination and join it with the imagination of the filmmaker."
SOURCES:
Dudek, Duane "Sidewalk Director Speaks Up" The Milwaukee Sentinel 19 Jan 90
http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=58286
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sidewalk-stories-1990
Johnson, Melinda "Director of 'Sidewalk Stories' to discuss his silent film at Syracuse International Film Festival" 3 Oct 14
Maslin, Janet "Chaplinesque Artist and Waif Among the Homeless" The New York Times 3 Nov 89
Matthews, Jack "The Sound of Applause Greets Lane's New Silent Movie" The Los Angeles Times 23 Nov 89
