Directed by: James Marsh
Staring: Jean François Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau & Annie Allix
On August 7th 1974, Philippe Petit, a 24 year old Frenchman, stepped out on to a 200 ft-high wire connecting New York’s twin towers where he danced for almost an hour before he was arrested. This is his story. Following six and a half years of dreaming, Petit spent eight months in NYC planning the execution of the coup. A mixture of interviews, archive footage and dramatised reconstructions, James Marsh’s film recalls the events. Man on Wire must surely count as one of the most beautiful and thrilling documentaries ever made, a unique and magnificent spectacle that became known as “the artistic crime of the century”.