THE LIFE and work of director Robert Altman, who achieved fame with his second feature M*A*S*H, is celebrated in Canadian film-maker Ron Mann’s fascinating documentary. 

It follows Altman when, after service in WWII, he returned to his home town in Kansas and cut his celluloid teeth on commercials, including the eminently instructive How to Run a Filling Station.

Hollywood beckoned and Altman became a top TV director. But iot wasn’t all plain sailing — he clashed with film mogul Jack Warner over overlapping dialogue in the rightly unremembered 1968 science-fiction feature Countdown.

M*A*S*H, a hippy-friendly satirical take on the Korean War, brought Altman cult celebrity. The uniquely personal films that followed, among them the disastrous Popeye and lauded works like Nashville, The Player and A Wedding guaranteed him auteur status. Altman’s widow — they met when she played a nurse in a TV episode of Whirlybirds he directed — and family members collaborated on this film, which has much to enjoy, especially the interviews and archive footage, which are used to create this portrait of a film maverick.

These, along with filmed eulogies by actors from his films, certainly add depth, with Bruce Willis describing the term “Altmanesque” as meaning “kicking Hollywood’s ass.” But it’s a pity, though, that the film’s more hagiography than biography.

Review by Alan Frank