Twin Towers high-wire act immortalised in documentary

New York’s World Trade Centre will forever be instantly associated with the horrors of September 11, 2001...

New York’s World Trade Centre will forever be instantly associated with the horrors of September 11, 2001 but a long-forgotten and inspiring perspective of the Twin Towers emerges in a new documentary by British film-maker James Marsh.

Titled simply Man on Wire, Marsh’s acclaimed film charts the daring feat of French tightrope walker Philippe Petit, who on August 7, 1974, linked the two towers with a cable before spending 45 minutes “dancing” on the wire amongst the clouds, 1,400 feet above the streets of New York.

The absorbing film, a winner at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to be released in the United States on August 8, strikingly makes no reference to the eventual destruction of the towers on America’s day of terror 27 years later. For Marsh, excluding mention of 9/11 was straightforward.

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“Philippe’s story represents a kind of magical moment where the towers, these two vast monuments to capitalism, were transformed as an artistic canvas for 45 beautiful minutes,” Marsh said.

“So I decided very early not to engage or reference any images of a disaster that is obscene and involves the tragic loss of thousands of lives, when Philippe’s story is the absolute opposite of that.”

Instead, Marsh’s film concentrates on the elaborate preparations for Petit’s wire-walk, which was carried out with all the subterfuge and attention to detail of a complex bank robbery.

Petit, who at the time of the stunt was just short of his 25th birthday, said he became transfixed by the idea of walking between the Twin Towers from reading a magazine article on the buildings’ construction while waiting for a dentist appointment in Paris in 1968.