Man on Wire

Thanks to my friend Viv Apple for the following piece:


The introductory scenes of ‘Man on Wire’ felt as tense as any spy movie; the preparations being carried out filmed with an atmosphere as edgy as any gangster yarn. But this was real. By the time it reached the main titles and the building site that was to become the twin towers, we had no doubts about the film’s reality.

Intercut with shots of the towers being slowly assembled are scenes of Philippe Petit’s childhood, and how he first discovered his dream of the twin towers by seeing a photo of the proposed structures in a dentist’s waiting room. From then on he forgot his toothache and devoted himself to the achievement of his ambition: tight-rope walking across between the tops of the south and north towers. It’s easy to see why he has been labelled by some as mad or an egomaniac, but Philippe is a passionate Frenchman, and whereas this phrase normally brings to mind an ardent lover, in this case his passion has been concentrated on achieving more and more daring feats of tight-rope walking - with the ultimate goal in mind of conquering the highest buildings in New York. Mad he is not, but he is clearly eccentric, for who else (even a Frenchman) would go around routinely riding a unicycle?

At the age of 20 he also became obsessed with Annie, who soon fell for him and was drawn into his dream. Together they worked on the dream - she initially following him on the wire (now that’s what I call true love!). This back story, interwoven with shots of the growing towers, took on a surreal quality, no doubt helped by the sensitive background score by Michael Nyman.

Annie recalls with a quieter passion Philippe’s first daring stunt of walking across the highest points of Notre Dame de Paris. Whilst he was calmly stepping along his wire she went onto the interior where there was a gathering of distinguished clergy, and announced what was happening above them. Jean-Francois, an accomplice, had said that the walk was ‘against the law but not wicked or mean’ - and sure enough the police and people in the street below gazed at Philippe in wonder, not disapprobation.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge was a tougher challenge, but by this time his confidence made it seem entirely natural and earned him the same reaction of amazed wonder from the crowd - and the police. The quality of the photography in these scenes, as in the whole film, emphasises the beauty of what was happening. It seemed to me quite amazing that in a documentary shot over a period of more than thirty years, each part of the story melds seamlessly with the next, holding the tension, and the attention, perfectly together.

In 1974, Philippe went to see the twin towers in New York. When Annie saw the pictures she was fearful, but Philippe could see workmen still there, finishing off, so now was the time to do it. He had to get tons of equipment into the south tower, and found an insider, Barry, an Englishman, to help. They made ‘official’ passes with which to gain access to the lifts, and gradually managed to get everything up to the required positions.

The final, climactic part of this true story is filled with the same tension of the first part, but with added excitement as Philippe draws closer to his dream. To see him holding his 26ft pole, balancing on a ¾ inch wire against a clear blue sky, was a truly beautiful sight. And to share in the relief and triumph felt by him, Annie and all his followers at the end was an emotional moment. This film will surely help to counteract other less happy thoughts associated with the twin towers.

by Viv Apple

Man on Wire

Asking for my ticket at Cineworld, I mistakenly called the film 'Man on a Wire'. Twenty minutes of adverts and trailers later, the BBFC certificate appeared on screen, rendering the title as 'Man on Wire'. Hmmm, a bit ungrammatical, I thought; wonder if it's a mistake. The opening credits, however, confirmed it.

Towards the end of the film, the provenance was made clear: "man on wire" is the phrase handwritten in sharply angled, authoritative capital letters on Philippe Petit's arrest sheet under the heading "nature of complaint".

Philippe Petit, for those not in the know, is a French wirewalker and all-round daredevil, a man who was arrested in August 1974 following a not-exactly-legal wirewalk between the two towers of the World Trade Centre. His earlier, similarly unapproved antics on the Sydney Harbour bridge also ended with Petit getting his collar felt. On that occasion, he lifted the arresting officer's watch even as he was being handcuffed. For this, if nothing else, Petit now has a place in my pantheon of personal heroes.

Now in his late 50s, Petit's contributions to James Marsh's documentary reveal a man no less infused with bravado and love of life ... just as long as that life is lived on the edge. Spurning the question of why he does what he does ("I had just done this marvellous thing," he recalls of his twin towers caper, "and all they could ask me was why"), Petit throws himself enthusiastically into recounting the events surrounding his iconic wirewalk. While other interviewees give static (but still emotionally vibrant) testimony, Petit prowls before the camera, acts out bits of the drama, produces models to demonstrate the intricacies of rigging up the wires ... The man is irrepressible. Marsh's film could have consisted of nothing but Petit talking to camera and it would have been 90 minutes of hypnotic cinema.

But Marsh does much more. He intersperses interview footage with re-enactments of Petit & co.'s conspiracy to smuggle into the WTC all the necessary equipment, get said equipment to the roof and rig up the wire, all the while avoiding detection by security guards. 'Crime' is a harsh word for what Petit and his collaborators did, but it was illegal, therefore Marsh's decision to shoot the grainy, urgent black-and-white re-enactments in the style of a '70s crime movie is both inspired and aesthetically valid. The latter stages of the plan - particularly when Petit makes it to the rooftop - would challenge any filmmaker given (a) budgetary restrictions, and (b) the unavailability of the towers themselves, but Marsh finds a way around this by employing a decidedly expressionist style for these scenes. The wirewalk itself is chronicled simply by using still photographs taken on the day. The result is no less vertiginous for the images being static.

It's not just the giddy heights Petit braved that induce a woozy light-headedness in the viewer. This is as much a film about the twin towers as it is about Petit's determination to walk a high wire between them. In 1968, the towers not yet built, Petit saw an artist's impression of them in a newspaper article. The sheer scale captivated him. He took a pencil and drew a line between them. This one moment decided the course of his life. The towers were the challenge that everything else he did led up to. And he broke the law - he and his co-conspirators (including an inside man who occupied business premises in the WTC) - in order to do so.

It will never be possible to watch 'Man on Wire' without the shadow of 9/11 falling over it. And maybe that's the point. Maybe Marsh, in bringing this astounding story to the screen in such electrifying style, is reclaiming two equally astounding buildings - epic feats of engineering - from the act of terrorism that has come to define them. Reclaiming them in the name of the acrobatic work of art that Petit achieved.