Charles (right) and Nicola Lane as the Artist and the Child in SIDEWALK STORIES [photographer - Bill Dill]

By Dennis Leroy Kangalee

I most recently re-watched Charles Lane’s brilliant “Sidewalk Stories.”

It’s a silent film about the exploits of a street-artist (played by Lane himself) who draws portraits in the West Village and becomes responsible for a homeless toddler (his actual daughter, two years old). Concurrently, he falls in love with a middle-class woman intrigued by him, but unaware of his dispossession. I had not seen it when it first came out in 1989, had only heard about it on the margins of Spike Lee’s enormous popular success, and often saw it referenced in film journals later on. In 1999, when I tried obtaining a copy on VHS from Kim’s Video in NYC, I was told there were no formal videos of it - except for bootlegs that were circulating. 16mm prints were available for a short time, but obviously that did not help.

Watching “Sidewalk Stories” reminded me how bad comedy in movies has gotten. Lane’s superb black & white feature seamlessly combined homage to traditional ‘old world’ silent film comedy with a very modern commentary on the gentrification of lower Manhattan at the time, and of course, the constant man-made problem of homelessness. It is a charming film that has the soul of a lion while appearing to be a lamb.

Its displaced, marginalized, and forgotten people reflect a great deal of our world and there is always something mysteriously biblical about those who are “without.” And the temptation to make these human beings “symbolize” something other than raw live flesh and mind is one that filmmakers especially must balk at. The great humorists are able to make poetry out of such terrible circumstances, and at times reveal something even mystical about the human comedy.

In 2014, Sam Weisberg accurately wrote that this 1989 classic was “filled with Chaplinesque sentiment and slapstick,” but observed that it also had a “not-so-Chaplinesque sex scene amid a cacophony of tribal bongos.” Well, how could Chaplin have done that? Why would Chaplin even have thought of inferring African ancestral motifs or sly jokes? Charles Lane is a witty Black American, Chaplin was from white English vaudeville culture. These types of strange criticisms reek of a kind of nervous ignorance. Weisberg, who is white, admires “Sidewalk Stories” and authored an insightful interview with Lane but still seems to fetishize Lane’s ability and - obviously - his identity as a Black filmmaker who made a silent film.

“Sidewalk Stories” does have some of the charm and sentimental inclinations of Chaplin, and also never strays from depicting poverty and the brutality of life which would have resulted in a sanitized and insulting movie had he done so. Even if the artist does not see as others might -- there are some things in life that mustn't be glamorized or evaded: War, rape, slavery, racism, poverty, humiliation, dispossession. These are part of the terrors of human life we have come to normalize.

Much of comedy is the same. And certainly, movies straddle between these warped, changing apexes of popular culture.

Dave Chappelle may be the GOAT (he isn't) to some people, but it's not like he's had a lot of competition after he left his sharp TV series at Comedy Central (the show and his decision to leave were the best contributions he made to comedy and culture, period), the same way you can look around and not really understand why Taylor Swift is so compelling to people. Who's really giving her competition? Does she have competition in the pop world? Is the battle between Kendrick and Drake actual or drummed up social media entertainment? I wouldn’t know.

What I do know is that one’s contemporaries, famous or off-radar, are important because it helps to contextualize an artist’s work and it also grants a prism in which to compare and analyze work.

Competition is very important for artists, not because one must be "the best," but because in order to actually stretch oneself in one's own time -- knowing that your peers are as good if not better than you will always inspire you.

Singular artists however are a different breed. They march to the beat of their own drum. Less of the time than they are in the times. Charles Lane reminds me of the poet or thinker who is comfortably at the margin, and while understanding the pop world, is not of it and does not really have a desire or ability to enable it.

Like Henry Dumas or Bob Kaufman (extreme examples and tragic), the outsider artist is keenly aware of his place within the zeitgeist, it's just that he is less concerned with media hype than he is with his own ideas and expression.

Bill Gunn, Christopher St. John, and such are patron saints of such a world. Charles Lane is as well. And his feature film “Sidewalk Stories” is a testament to feeling and heart.

If there is soul music, may there continue to be soul films. In one stroke, Charles Lane kicked off this promise. He may have been unable to hold onto it, but I don’t believe that. As much as I don’t understand the emphasis or stress on legends like Francis Ford Coppola, he made a strong handful of good films, some even great perhaps. Has his “bad” work overwhelmed his batting average? Yes. It has. But why is that important? Audiences have been waiting for him to outdo his seventies films - or even his charming “The Outsiders” – for forty years now.

Charles Lane directs a scene in SIDEWALK STORIES [photgraper Lisa Leavitt]

Charles Lane, again one of those rare birds, knocked us out with a great little film and struggled formally in the professional show-biz landscape eternally. There are several other brilliant filmmakers, namely Black auteurs, this has happened to. Some were comfortable with this and chose their independence almost spitefully (the enigmatic Larry Clark comes to mind), some like Wendell B. Harris - were simply mistreated. Lane’s trajectory, unfortunately, fulfilled the curse heaped onto many promising directors whose films had extraordinary prowess (“Sidewalk Stories” itself received such a stunning 12-minute standing ovation and was the recipient of nearly a dozen awards. That is a staggering achievement…and yet it did not help Lane make more films. This alone deserves its own diagnostic essay.)

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“Sidewalk Stories” acknowledges the past glory of Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but doesn’t pander, patronize or make ironic comments; Lane isn’t winking and pulling a “clever” scheme with the film (unlike the silly 2012 movie, “The Artist”) and while it wears its enchanting awkwardness is worn on its sleeve – it gave the precise kick in the ass that cinema deserved in 1989.

And now, it’s what comedy needs and what cinema deserves.

For any filmmaker frustrated with their approach to expression or vocabulary surrounding actors, “Sidewalk Stories” is even good for a simple shot in the arm for those seeking a ‘new way’ of approaching something. For example, the film’s attention to body language is so marvelously exhibited, you realize how robbed we all are with the boring perfunctory CLOSE-UP or poorly choreographed “action sequence.”

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With hints of Ralph Ellison – Lane’s tramp artist uses electricity from the street, immediately conjuring the narrator in “The Invisible Man” and even post-war neo-realist Italian films (the downtown decimation of the tenements recall the bombed out rubble buildings of De Sica and Rossellini) – the movie’s unpretentious attempts to express the travails of one of New York’s wronged retains its humor and sobriety by never declaring an op-ed essay on homelessness to the audience, nor does it hand-wring. The movie is not asking anyone to feel bad for its characters and I find this remarkable because that is not easy to do. It is quite possible to make a decent - or even a very good movie – that does moralize. I am not against this, it’s just very difficult to do well. “Sidewalk Stories” simply has a lot of heart. To his credit, Lane is interested in showing some creative people who may not be particularly good at their art, but try to survive as dignified human beings nevertheless in a world that is utterly beneath them.

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For a little fun, I notated some interesting facts/observations while viewing the film:

The West 4th Street Washington Sq. Coffee Shop - with its OPEN 24 HOURS status - is a marvelous relic of old New York. And while the diner itself is still around, younger people today would be hard-pressed to find an all-hours joint like this open after a hard night of clubbing. And denizens of our concrete gutters no longer have low-key comfortable places to nurse an elongated cup of bad coffee into the wee hours of cold morning.

Notice the size of the late 1980’s baby stroller. Compare it to 2024.

It is shown that it costs $1,950.00 a month for a 1BR in Soho circa 1989. Look up what it is today.

Remember when Lane made the film, Basquiat had just died - at his height - the year before.

You can tell Lane and his team had fun making the film. The whimsical, silly, bittersweet, odd, urgent, funky – is all there.

Ironically in the Reagan-era 1980s, people still invested in each other, not politicians. Not like the way we put all our “hopes” in rich members of society who will supposedly help us. Lane - and even Spike Lee’s early films – show a kernel of our emphatic attention in and towards each other. Less concerned about power, more about dignity. I cannot overstate this enough.

The gnarly imagery and collision of the wealthy’s furs and the grungy itinerant.

The whistleblowing pack of women out to get Charles has a parallel with another NY cult classic – “After Hours” by Martin Scorsese, made the year before. That downtown paranoia, bizarre tonality, and actual violence accosting Griffin Dunne is similar, but with less consequences.

When Charles returns to his make-shift home in the bowels of an abandoned tenement, he now stands before a demolished building. He takes his baby to a shelter. To sleep, he ties a cord around his neck and her ankle.

In the library (once the most sought after shelter when diners and churches closed their doors), Charles reads “Alien” (yes, as in the movie). For he is an alien, in an alien land…

The racist doorman. When Charles goes to visit his paramour, he must get by the hoity-toity doorman. Funny, striking, dead-honest scene.

“Preserve the Greenwich Village Waterfront.”

Anyone who has ever known or experienced gentrification or the dissolution of a neighborhood will take note of this in their own personal way. (Again, it is remarkable how such things are handled in different universes: how Spike does it in “Do The Right Thing” versus Lane’s wistful exhibition in “Sidewalk Stories” emboldens both films, making me appreciate the styles of the directors in new ways. If only Lane had gotten the support and management that was thrown into Lee – he could have been a worthy contemporary keeping Lee on his toes.)

Oliver Stone’s “Talk Radio” based on Eric Bogosian’s play, plays at the Waverly Cinema (now IFC). It is seen on the marquee, in the distance on reverse shots for the scenes at West 4th St/handball/basketball courts.

I highly recommend “Sidewalk Stories” and when you watch it ask yourself why we are not supporting more films like this. If you can find them.

The Soulful Comedy of Charles Lane

By Dennis Leroy Kangalee