![]() ![]() 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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