The most important figure in 20th-century French music? Erik Satie or Pierre Boulez? Serge Gainsbourg or Édith Piaf? The Messieurs Schönberg and Boublil?

This exuberant documentary by David Hertzog Dessites makes a persuasive case for another name: Michel Legrand. Composer, pianist, arranger, occasional actor, television personality and jazz heavyweight, Legrand’s exceptional gifts and restless musical energy seem to fizz in every frame.

Drawing on archival footage from the early 1950s and performance material from Legrand’s final concert tours before his death at 86 in 2019, Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand charts his journey from prodigy to polymath. As a teenager he studied under the formidable Nadia Boulanger at the Paris Conservatoire before launching a career that would encompass jazz, orchestral music and some of the most memorable film scores of the modern era.

Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand. Photo supplied

Among the film’s delights is rarely seen footage from the making of The Young Girls of Rochefort. We see the teenage passion for jazz – sparked by a concert by Dizzy Gillespie – resurface in the sleek cool of his score for The Thomas Crown Affair, which produced his enduring...