The John and Yoko show

TORONTO — John Lennon joked that since he was a schoolboy he’d always gotten into trouble, maybe because he just had a look about him.

Eventually he got into trouble with the U.S. government.

The ex-Beatle’s celebrated battle with the feds is chronicled in “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” a documentary tracing how he went from rock star to fierce anti-war protester to “undesirable alien.”

The film was made with the cooperation of Mr. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, who said the movie is a rich and authentic portrait of the man and what he was fighting for.

“Basically, if you want to know about John, this is John,” Miss Ono told Associated Press at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the documentary played in advance of its theatrical debut today.

Directors David Leaf and John Scheinfeld were able to mine archival recordings and family photos provided by Miss Ono and secured rights to use about three dozen songs by the Beatles and Mr. Lennon in the film’s soundtrack, including “Revolution,” “All You Need Is Love,” “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance.”

The film also features extensive new recollections from Miss Ono, who gradually warmed up to the filmmakers after initial suspicions.

“I’m always skeptical, because I’m responsible for the image of John and all that, and I just don’t want to make a mistake,” Miss Ono said. “Quite often, people approach me and they say one thing, then they do the other, so I was very cagey about it at the beginning. But they did a very good job with the music to make sure the music is right. I felt it was a very classy film.”

The materials Miss Ono provided gave the film a wealth of previously unseen images and recorded comments by Mr. Lennon, who becomes almost the narrator of his own story.

“What we discovered going through there is that it was in essence the John and Yoko reality show,” Mr. Scheinfeld said. “They documented their daily life. There was often a camera around, often a microphone around. She saved it, so we were able to find a lot of those great moments that helped us tell the story.”

The film opens with Mr. Lennon’s appearance at a 1971 concert to free John Sinclair, who had been in prison for two years for selling marijuana to undercover police.

Mr. Lennon wound up under FBI surveillance as he began hanging out with such counterculture radicals as Bobby Seale, Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and considered headlining a concert tour to help bring out the vote against President Nixon’s re-election.

The Nixon administration’s response was to sic the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Mr. Lennon, seeking to deport him, ostensibly because of a drug conviction in England.

The filmmakers trace Mr. Lennon’s development from flippant bad boy — who drew the wrath of fans when he remarked that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus — to a key spokesman against the Vietnam War, whose colorful tactics included “bed-ins” with Miss Ono to promote peace.

Critics mocked him, calling his antics silly, idealistic stunts that would have no practical results. Yet Mr. Lennon kept at it with passion and humor.

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