![]() ![]() More than halfway through the documentary, long after we’ve seen dozens of the nude photographs that made Newton so famous and once we’ve gotten a little annoyed at how often The Cure’s “Pictures of You” is used as a transitional track between scenes, is when von Boehm tackles the photographer’s childhood in what would become Nazi Germany and mentions his early adult years in Singapore and later Australia. Von Boehm rejects a typical biographical structure, choosing to focus on those thematic similarities in Newton’s work, as described by his collaborators, rather than relying on linearity. ![]() These interviews are the best elements of “The Bad and the Beautiful,” and they dominate the first half of the film. Jones literally shrugs while saying, “Sexism and racism, I never felt that at all,” before breaking out into a delightfully wide grin and offering as a comparative, “I’ve tied up guys before. Similarly praiseful is Jones, who Newton once photographed for a magazine cover nude, wearing only chains around her ankles, an image that inspired threats against the publication. “‘I like you! Damn you!’” is how Rossellini describes what she thinks Newton was channeling with his “machismo” point of view, which manifested in an appreciation for the beauty and strength of womanhood (“I like you!”) with a contrasting desire to see it torn down (“Damn you!”). To Rossellini, Jones, model Nadja Auermann, actress Hanna Schygulla, and other interviewees, Newton’s camera held up a mirror up to our misogynist society and reflected it back to us in unexpectedly beautiful, uncompromisingly garish ways. The nude bottom half of a woman’s body sticking out the open mouth of a gigantic alligator. A woman wearing nothing but a pair of designer high heels, laying on a beach, her upper half ensconced in and hidden by black plastic trash bags. ![]() A woman made up like a Barbie doll, her limbs splayed out on a hotel bed, her slip riding up. Also in his portfolio are disquieting compositions that suggest abuse and violence. If looking into the camera, the women’s expressions were always challenging and declarative, as if they were almost daring the viewer to gaze upon them and deal with whatever feelings (shame, lust, embarrassment, jealousy) were churned up as a result.īut that idea of feminine control wasn’t universal within Newton’s work, or least, not in a straightforward way. Certain series depicted individual or groups of women clad in gorgeous, high-end fashion in one shot, and then in the exact same positions-but now fully naked-in another. If dressed, they were often outfitted in fetish wear, like pleather corsets, lace lingerie, or thigh-high stockings or boots. The women in his photographs were nearly universally nude or seminude, tall, thin, full-breasted, similarly shaved. Director Gero von Boehm shows us numerous contact sheets of images that demonstrate Newton’s style. To see just one of Newton’s pictures is to understand how deeply his photography, which gained popularity in the 1950s and then exploded into the mainstream through partnerships with Vogue, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel in the 1960s through the 1990s, has reverberated through fashion, art, and film, from the bad (Terry Richardson is clearly a devotee) to the good ( Tom Ford’s film “ Nocturnal Animals” owes a debt to Newton’s preference for gorgeous, distant women). ![]() For as incomplete as “The Bad and the Beautiful” feels in terms of addressing criticisms leveled at Newton, the inclusion of so many women’s perspectives is its own defensive statement. That interview-heavy structure gives voice to the models whom we recognize from Newton’s photos- Grace Jones, in that iconic nude Playboy shoot with then-boyfriend Dolph Lundgren Isabella Rossellini, her face gripped by former flame David Lynch. The documentary “Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful,” released in what would have been Newton’s centennial birthday year, only briefly dares to question the methodologies of the man who recoiled at the words “good taste.” Instead, “The Bad and the Beautiful” is less about Newton himself and more about how his work made the women he photographed feel. ![]()
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