Man on Wire documents Frenchman Philippe Petit’s unapproved high-wire performance between Towers I and II in 1974.

Polaris / Jean-Louis Blondeau

On Aug. 7, 1974 a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit went where no man had gone before … and no one will be able to ever again … when he stepped out on a wire that had been strung 200 feet between the tops of the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan..

What followed was the culmination of a years-long dream, publicity around the world and a team of New York City policemen waiting for Petit at either end of his wire. And now there’s documentary filmmaker James Marsh’s intriguing film Man on Wire, which opens the 11th Newport International Film Festival tonight at the Jane Pickens Theater.

Man on Wire captures the excitement and skullduggery involved in sneaking into the still- not-fully-occupied building late on the night of Aug. 6, hiding under a tarp on an unfinished floor just below the rooftop while breathlessly trying to avoid a security guard making his rounds. Will Petit do it and fulfill his dream? Man on Wire is surprisingly suspenseful, considering that the outcome has been known for more than 30 years. It won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Marsh interviews Petit more than three decades after his feat, along with his wife and helpmate, Annie, and several of the co-conspirators who helped him plan and execute his daredevil stunt. It was the culmination of a dream that one friend described as “the thrill of doing something illegal, but something that doesn’t hurt anyone,” save for Petit himself, had a gust of wind knocked him off his wire. Using archival photos, reenactments and Petit’s own home movies of his exhaustive field test trials on a wire strung across a real field in France, Marsh takes us every step of the way of Petit’s plans. In fact, it goes right back to the very beginnings, when Petit was reading a newspaper article in a dentist’s waiting room and first discovered the World Trade Center towers, which at the time hadn’t even been built. It was the start of a long dream. Annie says that once Philippe saw them, “He could no longer go on living without having at least tried to conquer those towers because it felt like those towers belonged to him.”

Later there’s footage of the WTC under construction and an early visit by Petit to the nearly finished building to scope out what his crossing would involve. He gained intimate access in the guise of a French journalist wishing to interview construction workers.

Man on Wire jumps back and forth between the new interviews and flashbacks to his actual crossing, a reenacted setup of the early morning hours of Aug. 7 and the earlier exploits of this self-taught wire walker when he walked between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia.

Petit, who says he “wanted to conquer beautiful stages,” is passionate about his avocation. Man on Wire is a valentine to dreamers everywhere who refuse to give up the hope of reaching their goal.

Man on Wire will be screened at 7 o’clock. tonight[] at the Jane Pickens Theater as the opening night attraction at the Newport International Film Festival. Tickets are $25 for tonight’s opener, available at the festival box office at 22 Broadway, online at www.newportfilmfestival.com or at (401) 835-5356. It also will be screened at 9:15 p.m. Saturday at the Cable Car Cinema in Providence. Tickets are $10 at the door.

****Man on Wire

Featuring: Philippe Petit, Annie Petit.

Rated: Not rated, contains tense moments.

mjanuson@projo.com