Helmut Newton: the Bad and the Beautiful, Gero Von Boehm’s succinct documentary about provocative Weimar-era Berlin-born fashion photographer definitely indulges in its share of gushing hero worship. But there’s also an honest and genial attempt at conveying the late Newton’s flaws as a human being and as a photographer. It also explores the motives behind his once-controversial and provocative depictions of statuesque nude women striking sometimes borderline sadomasochistic poses.
Many of Newton’s former favorite photographic subjects appear in the documentary to sing his praises—or occasionally take playful jabs at his overt sexism and uniquely German perverseness (he once did a major magazine photoshoot with a Rotisserie chicken in tiny high heels). Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling, Claudia Schiffer, Isabella Rossellini, Marianne Faithfull, and other one-time A-list actresses and models all come to the collective conclusion that Newton was a classic Weimar-era Berlin expressionist obsessed with tacky softcore sexual tableaux but also influenced by Leni Riefenstahl’s fascistic worship of the perfect physique (where Riefenstahl’s camera worshipped the male form, Newton’s genuflected before the ideal female anatomical specimen).
Of course, nowadays, Newton’s work from the 1980s and 1990s for hoity-toity magazines like Vogue now seem like badly aged provocation in the same outmoded league as Madonna’s once-shocking early 1990s Sex book. Although the endless encomiums that come from the interviewees here are entirely predictable (however understandable they may be) we do get to see Newton in action behind the camera plying his trade. And as The Bad and the Beautiful makes clear, if nothing else, Newton was an artist who knew exactly what he wanted and was an expert at molding his fashionable subjects to perfectly embody his own naughty midnight fantasies. Optional. Aud: C.