Fashion and celebrity photographer Helmut Newton was the undisputed champion of the objectification of women for decades, peaking in the 1960s but continuing almost to the end of his life in 2004 at age 83. A group viewing of this film could easily lead to a rousing discussion of whether Newton’s intentionally provocative images exploited or empowered his subjects, both in the context of his time and as seen with 2020 vision.

But German documentarian Gero von Boehm isn’t interested in assessing Newton from a post-#MeToo perspective. His goal is to clarify Newton’s own motives and affinities, and The Bad & The Beautiful accomplishes that with its many frank interviews and candid footage of the photographer himself. (The eye-rolling title, lifted from the steamy 1952 Hollywood melodrama about Hollywood, is some indication that von Boehm isn’t as clever or as creative as his subject.)

Movie fans will be even more enraptured with von Boehm’s in-depth interviews with stars Isabella Rossellini, Charlotte Rampling, and Grace Jones, all of whom are as magnetic as ever and offer frank and eloquent assessments of their encounters with Newton. His work was about “getting inside the part of you that’s really interesting and bringing it out,” Rampling says, suggesting the many of his female subjects found even his seemingly demeaning images revelatory.

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Another key source is June Newton, the Australlian-born wife of the German photographer. Married to him for 54 years and herself a photographer, June Newton is a kind of Nick Carraway to her husband’s Gatsby, always in awe and in shock and ready to explain away his rough edges. There’s even one amazing image by Newton that includes himself, his wife, and a naked model that sums up their relationship.

There are no voices in the film to put Newton’s work in the context of sexual politics or the wider art of photography, perhaps in keeping with Newton’s own declaration that the two dirty words in photography are “art” and “good taste.” But there are plenty of models, editors, collaborators, and others to fill the biographical details, share anecdotes about photo shoots and ménages a trois, and reassure us that everything was consensual and in good fun. Newton himself provides details on his German childhood and escape from Nazism that has obvious implications for the art he would later create.

Newton established a kind of narrative, scandalous, meticulously staged fashion photography that did not previously exist, setting the stage for David LaChapelle and countless others. That the man himself was a mass of contradictions is no surprise. The Bad & The Beautiful may take it all pretty much at face value, but the nature of the subject means it’s still very much in your face.

Grade: B. Not rated but R equivalent, for nudity and language. Now available to stream at home via the Fine Arts Theatre’s Virtual Cinema streaming program.

Photos courtesy of Kino Marquee