Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #909 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-12-26
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Native New Yorkers know to expect the unexpected, but who among them could've predicted that a man would stroll between the towers of the World Trade Center? French high-wire walker Philippe Petit did just that on August 7th, 1974. Petit’s success may come as a foregone conclusion, but British filmmaker James Marsh’s pulse-pounding documentary still plays more like a thriller than a non-fiction entry--in fact, it puts most thrillers to shame. Marsh (Wisconsin Death Trip, The King) starts by looking at Petit's previous stunts. First, he took on Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral, then Sydney's Harbour Bridge before honing in on the not-yet-completed WTC. The planning took years, and the prescient Petit filmed his meetings with accomplices in France and America. Marsh smoothly integrates this material with stylized re-enactments and new interviews in which participants emerge from the shadows as if to reveal deep, dark secrets which, in a way, they do, since Petit's plan was illegal, "but not wicked or mean." The director documents every step they took to circumvent security, protocol, and physics as if re-creating a classic Jules Dassin or Jean-Pierre Melville caper. Though still photographs capture the feat rather than video, the resulting images will surely blow as many minds now as they did in the 1970s when splashed all over the media. Not only did Petit walk, he danced and even lay down on the cable strung between the skyscrapers. Based on his 2002 memoir, Man on Wire defines the adjective "awe-inspiring." --Kathleen C. Fennessy

DVD Description
On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman called Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire suspended between New York's twin towers, then the world’s tallest buildings. After an hour dancing on the wire, with no safety net or harness, he was arrested and thrown into an underground prison. Until that moment no one but Petit and his team of accomplices, who had spent months planning their illegal 'coup' (as they referred to it amongst themselves) knew anything about it.

Born out of a dream and an idea, Petit and his team of accomplices spent eight months planning the execution of their 'coup' in the most intricate detail. Like a team of professional bank robbers planning their most ambitious heist, the tasks they faced seemed virtually insurmountable: they would have to find a way to bypass the WTC's security; to smuggle the wire and rigging equipment into the towers; to suspend the wire between the two towers; to secure the wire at the correct tension to withstand the winds and the swaying of the buildings; to rig it secretly by night – all without being caught. Not to mention the walk itself...

Directed by James Marsh (The King, Wisconsin Death Trip), Man on Wire brings Petit's extraordinary adventure to life through the testimony of all the co-conspirators who created the single, beautiful spectacle that became known as "the artistic crime of the century".

Synopsis
MAN ON A WIRE is a spellbinding documentary that chronicles the stunning achievement of one Philippe Petit, a French-born performance artists who walked a hire wire between the South and North Towers of the World Trade Center in New York during the seventies. The stunt--six years in the planning--involved meticulous organization and was completely illegal. Not content attempting the death-defying feat once, Petit would complete the walk 110 floors above the streets of Manhattan eight times, only stopping when he was arrested. Directed by British filmmaker James Marsh (THE KING, WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP), MAN ON WIRE celebrates this truly incredible event and sheds light upon the man that made it happen.

Customer Reviews

On top of the World Trade Centre (9/10)
`Man On Wire' is a documentary chronicling Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers. A meticulously planned and highly illegal stunt, which involved years of clandestine plotting and finally a generous amount of good luck, director James Marsh claims the story struck him as "a heist movie", and it is evident in the telling. More exciting than all the `Ocean's' films put together, `Man On Wire' is the latest addition to the decade's role call of brilliant documentaries that have revolutionalised the form. From 'Fog of War', `Capturing the Friedmans', `Touching the Void', `Etre et Avoir', and `Grizzly Man', the noughties is replete with fine documentaries that have treated their subjects with a dynamism and imagination that in many cases belies the relative paucity of materials at their filmmakers' disposal. `Man on Wire' most closely resembles `Touching the Void' in that it mixes talking head accounts of real life events with largely reconstructed footage to create a gripping and engaging film. `Man on Wire' even uses fragmented narrative techniques from cinema to stimulate it structurally, and is scored beautifully by Michael Nyman.

Fundamentally, `Man on Wire' succeeds in communicating the transcendent beauty of the highwire act, and depicts Petit's mission as a great artistic - albeit meglomaniacal - vision. The depth of belief in this vision - from the man himself but equally from his co-conspirators, who had to invest enormous emotional and legal risks to help him - is stunningly justified in the scarce photographic footage of the event. And the documentary does more than just give you the story behind the infamous stunt, but touches upon - poignantly, but not explicitly - how the friendships of those involved became severed after its act, and the fatalistic sentiments by the protagonists on this subject is deeply poignant. Once he had become famous, the role of Petit's co-consirators - the logisticians whithout whom the stunt wouldn't have been possible - was quietly forgotten.

There is also the spectre, not mentioned in `Man On Wire' and not overtly implied, of the "falling man" of 9-11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers. What is eerily poetic about this film is that it is indicative of the many other myths and legends ingrained in the World Trade Centre before the hijackings. September 11th is not the only narrative associated with the Twin Towers, which, like all iconic buildings, have many ghosts: some benign, many not. But it is impossible to separate the terrifying image of black-suited Petit lying upon the tightrope as if suspended in clouds with the headfirst descent of the business-suited falling man. Moreover, while the Twin Towers themselves represented a rather megalomaniacal human need to build ever bigger structures, Petit's walk in the sky somehow transformed them momentarily into the gates of heaven. Brilliant.

Awe-inspiring
An astonishing story of the dream of a very enterprising young man and the meticulous planning leading up to a performance that most would have labelled impossible.

Although this has been pushed as a kind of heist documentary, the overriding theme I found was the passion of those telling their story and their overwhelming desire to make it a success. Whereas now we live in a world where base jumpers go for a brief self-gratifying fix, this is a tale of a man who wants to perform and have people enjoy his experience. His friends are a group of people who are attracted to the magnetic power of his passion and together they give the world a rare moment of astonishment.

The documentary's tension build up to the final performance compares with a few scenes showing the tightening of Philippe's wire and and is so expertly done that even though we know it happened, we still harbour the idea it may fail. From feeling that something will snap and seeing Philippe's haunted look of fear just before he steps out, we are treated to a marvellous performance of daring and impossibility.

crossing the void
When a documentary beats Slumdog Millionaire, Hunger, Mama Mia and In Bruges to the Outstanding British Film BAFTA you become very happy when it's just dropped through the letterbox. Simon Chinn and James Marsh's film tells the story (of which I was completely unaware) of Phillipe Petit's daring and illegal high-wire walk between the World Trade Centre's twin towers in New York in 1974. The mixture of interview, reconstruction and archive footage immediately brings to mind the superb Touching The Void (itself a BAFTA winner) and this film succeeds in much the same way; building tension, slowly revealing character and showing the devastating impact of a singular event on the lives of those involved.

The film drops you straight into the middle of the action as the various players make their way to the twin towers. Some have criminal sounding names like 'The Australian' or AKA's but we know that this is 'the artistic crime of the century', one with no victims, only leaving those who witnessed it touched by something special. At the centre, Petit is a clownish figure, unsurprising given his street-performer background, looking as a young man a little like Malcolm McDowell but his face now is softened and comical as he takes obvious pleasure from telling the story. This is contrasted with the obvious distress caused to those nearest and dearest to him. His girlfriend talks with great honesty about how this singular man completely dominated her life and conveys even today the sheer magic of being a spectator to his stunts. His closest friend Jean Louis Blondeau is touchingly emotional, conveying more than anyone else the culpability his accomplices felt in an event that could very well of course ended in death.

The element that luck plays in this plan's fulfilment is staggering and when you combine this with the fact that Petit had first come up with the idea on seeing a picture of the towers before construction had even begun (his simple hand-drawn line between the two buildings a perfect illustration of his joyous naivete) you begin to feel that this event had to happen. The effect on those who saw it is palpable, in one great piece of footage the arresting officer is clearly in thrall to this 'tight-rope dancer'. This is what makes the event and its remembrance in this superlative documentary such a fitting way to reclaim the towers from the event which removed them, the event which isn't mentioned once, but which casts such a long shadow that simply seeing a photograph of Petit on the wire, a plane flying past in the background, is enough to remind us of the singularity of his achievement, never to be repeated.

Even if you have a mild touch of vertigo like me this film is a must-see.