This week’s Disney+ debut of “The Beatles Anthology” is, for many fans of the Fab Four, a cause for celebration. The “Anthology” series is the only authorized Beatles documentary, originally produced in 1995 with the full cooperation and participation of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, then the surviving band members. The documentary has never been available for streaming or in any format beyond DVD, and now it has been not only restored but also expanded with a new ninth episode.

But some Beatlemaniacs of a certain age (say, Gen X and older) consider “Anthology” inferior to another Beatles documentary — one that, because of “Anthology,” is nearly impossible to see legally.

That film is “The Compleat Beatles,” originally released by MGM/UA Home Video in 1982. Its origins were odd, its execution borderline accidental: It was originally envisioned as a 10-minute companion film to a two-volume 1981 coffee table book of sheet music and other Beatles ephemera. A publisher named Delilah Communications hired Patrick Montgomery, an independent filmmaker, to direct, and sent him off to conduct interviews and assemble archival footage for the promotional short.

“Somehow we ended up with a four-hour rough cut that was the complete story,” Montgomery said in a recent video call from his home in Manhattan. “When the owner of Delilah, Stephanie Bennett, saw what I had done, she said, ‘Well, I realize now this is a much bigger thing. Let me see if I can raise the money to finish this as a full-length documentary.’”

Those funds came from MGM/UA, which was interested in augmenting its VHS releases of theatrical hits with original titles, and Montgomery set about completing the film. From the beginning, there was little question about the involvement of the Beatles themselves. “I made attempts to get all the Beatles to talk to me, but they didn’t want to,” Montgomery said. “John Lennon had just died a year before, and everybody was kind of shy about it.”

Additionally, Paul McCartney was already gathering materials for an extended documentary project, then called “The Long and Winding Road,” which would become “The Beatles Anthology.” Ever mindful of their legacy, and perpetually intent on controlling it, the Beatles’ company, Apple, even sued to halt the release of “The Compleat Beatles,” according to Montgomery. But Delilah had rights to the songs via the publishing project, “so they couldn’t stop us from making the film,” Montgomery said.

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