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It's been winning awards and making audiences cry. But why did Man On Wire take so long to make? Erlend Clouston tries to find out. On the morning of August 7, 1974, a 24-year-old Frenchman named Philippe Petit walked eight times across a cable stretched between the two 450m towers of New York's World Trade Centre.
He should have died. How exactly Petit defied the laws of gravity, meteorology, self-preservation and common sense is one of the intriguing subtexts of Man On Wire, a documentary by James Marsh that had its European premiere at the Edinburgh film festival last week.
One explanation for Petit's survival can be found in the time it has taken to transfer his adventure to celluloid. Plotting an illegal stroll over a windswept metropolis demands serious control. Such types do not lightly surrender the rights to their story. But a pleading letter - "very beautiful and sensitive" - from Marsh, a veteran of the BBC's Arena series of TV documentaries, helped persuade Petit. The long wait seems to have paid off.
In February, the Sundance and Full Frame festivals delivered awards to Man On Wire. When it showed at New York's Tribeca festival a few weeks ago, audience members were moved to tears.
Petit, a burly-thighed 58-year-old with tufted hazel hair and a puckish upturned nose, is still pondering the collaboration. "We did quarrel sometimes, to the blood," he says. "Some of it I won, some I lost." Then, suddenly, he throws off his doubts: "Creative people should argue, of course. I love the film. It brings joy and inspiration."
Marsh, a 44-year-old long-haired Cornwallian, shrugs off any tensions: "If it had been easy, it would not have been any good."
One of the advantages of working with Petit is his colourful turn of phrase. Describing his exploits, he says: "You are untying yourself from the tangible and becoming half a bird."
Born near Paris in August 1949, Petit was 16 when he encountered the Omankowskys, a famed Czech highwire dynasty. By 1967, the artistically precocious teenager had been expelled from five schools, was informally enrolled as Papa Omankowsky's pupil and had begun life as a professional street performer.
By 22, he was the pioneer of aerial trespasses between the towers of Notre Dame cathedral and the north pylons of Sydney Harbour bridge. The plan for his greatest coup was hatched in 1968, when he stumbled on an illustration of the as-yet-unbuilt World Trade Centre, while waiting to see his dentist.
For the New York walk, Petit recruited seven free-spirited collaborators from France, Australia and America. Marsh reassembled the conspirators and they speak - unpaid - with engaging frankness direct to camera.
Jean-Louis thinks his American helpers "looked like losers"; Albert thinks Petit is "a nut or a conman"; Petit distrusts Albert, who (though the film diplomatically avoids the subject) naughtily hid a camera under his jacket. Annie, Petit's former amour, and Jean-Louis are touchingly tearful as they revisit the withered friendships of their youth. This is where documentary wins, every time - though Robert Zemeckis, maker of Forrest Gump, is discussing with Petit a feature film version of his exploit.
Marsh was unable, of course, to reassemble the World Trade Centre. In practical terms, this was solved by renting space in the newly rebuilt 52-storey WTC 7 (for shots of cable-carrying conspirators evading guards) and recreating the roof of the south tower in a New York studio (for shots of Petit fumbling for the crucial, line-bearing arrow that Jean-Louis fired across from the north tower).
The moral issue was harder. Marsh, who has lived for 14 years in Manhattan, decided that the best way to deal with 9/11 was not to mention it: "Why burden this beautiful story with the ugliness of that?"
References to the towers' destruction only float in obliquely. A 1974 construction worker promises the camera that the new buildings are "not going to come tumbling down"; Petit, reflecting on the possibility of failure, exclaims philosophically: "What a beautiful death - to die in the exercise of your passion."
So far, Petit has survived 79 high-altitude walks, a dozen for charity. The film deliberately avoids probing for the roots of this obsession. For Marsh, it was a matter of respect. "It is like becoming a priest," he says. "He just does it."
Uncluttered with analyses of Petit's mind, art, writings and cigar habit, Man On Wire rattles along like a heist movie. The title comes from the downtown police chargesheet. After his arrest, Petit was dispatched to a psychiatric ward, but they could detect nothing wrong with him.
Today, tucked away in the Catskills farmhouse he shares with the production director Kathy O'Donnell and a hoard of 18th-century woodworking tools, Petit is still a conundrum, currently trying to secure funding for other projects, including a high-wire opera in the Grand Canyon.
In Manhattan in 1974, they at least saw the funny side: Petit was sentenced to demonstrate juggling to children.
He still pushes himself hard, putting in four hours of practice a day. After a personal appearance in Edinburgh, he will embark upon a one-man show in California. He seems every bit as tough as the "half a bird" who bestrode Manhattan all those years ago. "You try to shake me," he says, "you will see I am like granite."
