Petit's Gift

...it’s just that the event itself was so extraordinary that the minimally competent recounting of it here has proved to be enough to cause critics and audiences to swoon...

...To which structure on the respective roofs of the North and South Towers should each end be attached...

...What kind of wire should he use...

...This is probably the only tack director James Marsh could have taken, since there is no footage of Petit’s feat, and since the destruction of the Towers makes revisiting the scene of the crime impossible...

...it’s just that the event itself was so extraordinary that the minimally competent recounting of it here has proved to be enough to cause critics and audiences to swoon...

...So vivid has the incident remained in my memory (I was 13 at the time) that I would have sworn under oath I had seen live footage that day of Philippe Petit’s tightrope act cutting into the morning’s Gilligan’s Island reruns...

...B&A Petit’s Gift The day the Twin Towers enchanted New York...

...To which structure on the respective roofs of the North and South Towers should each end be attached...

...He walked between them for 45 minutes, nearly 1,400 feet above the ground, before being taken into police custody and then, just as quickly, released...

...In point of fact, there was no footage, and there are only a few photographs of the event...

...Central Park had become a grassless mud pit...

...Only a year away from a catastrophic insolvency, the city was a mess, with its pockmarked streets, its buildings and bridges beginning to look as though they might crumble, graffi ti slathered over subway trains and platforms offering millions of riders the unwelcome sense that they were trapped inside a heavy-metal album cover...

...A man appeared on a high wire between the twin towers of the recently completed World Trade Center...

...t Man on Wire Directed by James Marsh John Podhoretz, editorial director of Commentary, is THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s movie critic...

...Marsh gives us a little bit of the fl avor of what it was like for New Yorkers that day and the days that followed, with some news footage of one of the arresting cops talking to reporters in a tone of dazed disbelief about how he realized, standing there on the roof of the North Tower, that he was witness to an act no one had ever attempted before or would ever attempt again...

...BY JOHN PODHORETZ Much of the movie is taken up with the team’s heist-like hijinks the night before the wire walk, complete with fi ctionalized recreations of Petit and Company hiding under tarpaulins for hours on parallel fl oors in the parallel buildings...

...Only a year away from a catastrophic insolvency, the city was a mess, with its pockmarked streets, its buildings and bridges beginning to look as though they might crumble, graffi ti slathered over subway trains and platforms offering millions of riders the unwelcome sense that they were trapped inside a heavy-metal album cover...

...Petit’s team of helpers included two friends from Paris, two stoner Jewish hippies from Manhattan he met at a party, a guy with a handlebar mustache who worked in the building for the state insurance commissioner, and an Australian he met during a trip to Sydney a few years earlier when he strung a line across its Harbour Bridge...

...Petit was a tightrope walker and he wanted to create the world’s longest and most dangerous tightrope and walk across it...

...The crime spike that had begun a decade earlier continued to spiral upward...

...Petit’s team of helpers included two friends from Paris, two stoner Jewish hippies from Manhattan he met at a party, a guy with a handlebar mustache who worked in the building for the state insurance commissioner, and an Australian he met during a trip to Sydney a few years earlier when he strung a line across its Harbour Bridge...

...Much of the movie is taken up with the team’s heist-like hijinks the night before the wire walk, complete with fi ctionalized recreations of Petit and Company hiding under tarpaulins for hours on parallel fl oors in the parallel buildings...

...And that’s a pity, because what Philippe Petit did on that August day in 1974 was offer a depressed city a moment of dazzled wonderment so powerful that, 34 years later, I still can’t help but think that I, too, was a witness to it, even though I know I wasn’t...

...Petit had that down...

...His goal required him to become an industrial engineer...

...Doing so wasn’t just a matter of mastering the old-time equilibrium trick performed in circuses from time immemorial...

...Petit was a tightrope walker and he wanted to create the world’s longest and most dangerous tightrope and walk across it...

...It turns out there was no “why...

...How, exactly, could one sling a wire from the roof of one building to the other...

...But it does throw Man on Wire off balance, because the troubles they had were relatively petty compared to the dazzling originality and creativity of the high-wire act itself...

...everyone, it seemed, had been mugged at least once...

...And then, one morning in August, something inexplicably wonderful happened...

...ASSOCIATED PRESS / ALAN WELNER The summer of 1974 was not a happy one in the United States, and nowhere did matters seem more grim than in New York City...

...How, exactly, could one sling a wire from the roof of one building to the other...

...But Marsh doesn’t go very far with it...

...How could the wire be stabilized...

...But Marsh doesn’t go very far with it...

...A man appeared on a high wire between the twin towers of the recently completed World Trade Center...

...It is probably the best-reviewed movie this year, but I don’t think it’s being praised because of its own excellence...

...Once all those questions were answered, there was the small matter of getting into the Twin Towers, hauling equipment weighing nearly one ton up to the roof, and fi xing the wire in the dead of night—all the while eluding security guards and cops and the like...

...What kind of wire should he use...

...In point of fact, there was no footage, and there are only a few photographs of the event...

...The crime spike that had begun a decade earlier continued to spiral upward...

...Petit had that down...

...everyone, it seemed, had been mugged at least once...

...How could the wire be stabilized...

...It is probably the best-reviewed movie this year, but I don’t think it’s being praised because of its own excellence...

...Perhaps my false memory is so vivid because every other piece of news in New York and elsewhere around that time was so unrelievedly sour—Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace the next day—that the contrast afforded by Petit’s daring, clever, joyful, crazy, and exhilarating stunt has kept it fresh...

...As Petit recounts in a compelling but slightly ponderous documentary called Man on Wire, all anybody wanted to ask him when he came down was “Why...

...So vivid has the incident remained in my memory (I was 13 at the time) that I would have sworn under oath I had seen live footage that day of Philippe Petit’s tightrope act cutting into the morning’s Gilligan’s Island reruns...

...As Petit recounts in a compelling but slightly ponderous documentary called Man on Wire, all anybody wanted to ask him when he came down was “Why...

...Perhaps my false memory is so vivid because every other piece of news in New York and elsewhere around that time was so unrelievedly sour—Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace the next day—that the contrast afforded by Petit’s daring, clever, joyful, crazy, and exhilarating stunt has kept it fresh...

...BY JOHN PODHORETZ The summer of 1974 was not a happy one in the United States, and nowhere did matters seem more grim than in New York City...

...But it does throw Man on Wire off balance, because the troubles they had were relatively petty compared to the dazzling originality and creativity of the high-wire act itself...

...Doing so wasn’t just a matter of mastering the old-time equilibrium trick performed in circuses from time immemorial...

...This is probably the only tack director James Marsh could have taken, since there is no footage of Petit’s feat, and since the destruction of the Towers makes revisiting the scene of the crime impossible...

...Once all those questions were answered, there was the small matter of getting into the Twin Towers, hauling equipment weighing nearly one ton up to the roof, and fi xing the wire in the dead of night—all the while eluding security guards and cops and the like...

...He walked between them for 45 minutes, nearly 1,400 feet above the ground, before being taken into police custody and then, just as quickly, released...

...His goal required him to become an industrial engineer...

...Central Park had become a grassless mud pit...

...And that’s a pity, because what Philippe Petit did on that August day in 1974 was offer a depressed city a moment of dazzled wonderment so powerful that, 34 years later, I still can’t help but think that I, too, was a witness to it, even though I know I wasn’t...

...It turns out there was no “why...

...And then, one morning in August, something inexplicably wonderful happened...

...Marsh gives us a little bit of the fl avor of what it was like for New Yorkers that day and the days that followed, with some news footage of one of the arresting cops talking to reporters in a tone of dazed disbelief about how he realized, standing there on the roof of the North Tower, that he was witness to an act no one had ever attempted before or would ever attempt again...