In August of 1974, a redheaded Frenchman with the perfectly precious nom de cirque Philippe Petit (along with a crew of coconspirators) sneaked into the newly erected World Trade Center, smuggled cables and equipment up to the unoccupied top floors, strung a tightrope from the roof of one tower to its twin in the dead of night, and then walked and knelt and saluted and lay supine between them for the better part of a morning hour. The feat sounds impressive on paper, but until you see this documentary, you won't realize how hushed and beautiful the performance was, how completely it dazzled passersby and police. Man on Wire is a magical account of a rare and unlikely "coup" (as Petit called it) that can never be repeated.

The documentary is constructed like a thriller, with every interview, archival scene, and black-and-white reenactment placed so as to maximize suspense. Director James Marsh makes plenty of other effective choices as well—I particularly like the delicately seesawing Erik Satie that accompanies Petit's performance. But Marsh truly lucked out with his complex, contradictory subjects. Petit's impish persona (he used a unicycle to get around Paris and once stole a wristwatch off a cop who was in the process of arresting him) belies some serious engineering and managerial prowess. In new interviews, his English seems not to have improved much since the 1970s, and colorfully mangled idioms ("These twin towers are trotting in my head!") let you laugh at his sometimes-oppressive notion of the role that whimsy should play in ordinary life. Another counterpoint is his girlfriend at the time, a shy, green-eyed beauty whose memory of the events admirably blends objectivity and awe.