The inspirational story of the French daredevil who performed a tight-rope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center won the Oscars best documentary prize here Sunday.
British film-maker James Marsh's "Man on Wire" recalls Philippe Petit's extraordinary feat in 1974, which was planned and executed like a bank heist by the Frenchman and a group of his friends.
Petit joined Marsh on stage to accept the award on Sunday, and delighted audience members with an impromptu display of magic before taking the Oscars statuette and balancing it on his nose.
Marsh's absorbing film strikingly makes no reference to the destruction of the towers on America's day of terror 27 years after Petit's feat. Instead, the movie concentrates on the elaborate preparations for his wire-walk.
Petit, who at the time of the stunt was just short of his 25th birthday, said he became transfixed by the idea of walking between the Twin Towers from reading a magazine article on the buildings' construction while waiting for a dentist appointment in Paris in 1968.
"It became a beautiful obsession for me," he told AFP in an interview last year. "I just had this crazy idea to marry these two wonderful buildings with a cable."
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