Documentary
JIFF: 'Helmut Newton – The Bad and the Beautiful'

Wed, 23.02.2022 -
Sun, 03.04.2022
Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Brisbane & Southport

Women were indisputably at the core of legendary - if provocative - photographer Helmut Newton’s work. 

Born 1920 in Germany to a wealthy Jewish family, Helmut Newton (Helmut Neustädter) came of age ensconced in the seductive decadence of an 'anything goes' Berlin under the Weimar Republic. His teenaged apprenticeship under commercial photography pioneer Yva - who perished in the Holocaust - coincided with his family's persecution under the rise of the Third Reich and the emergence of the striking aesthetics of infamous Nazi propagandist, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

Newton escaped Nazi Germany with members of his family in 1938, and was forced to flee to Australia, following the increasingly oppressive Nuremburg laws. Newton spent most of WWII in Australia, before marrying Melbourne-born actor and photographer June Browne, whom he met while working as a commercial photographer, and setting up a studio in Flinders Lane.

The couple eventually settled in Paris where Helmut's gradual evolution beyond the, then conservative, confines of fashion photography coincided with the radical political upheaval of 1960s France. Newton worked around the globe, from Singapore to Australia to Paris to Los Angeles, but Weimar Germany was the visual hallmark of his work. One of the great masters of photography, Helmut Newton made a name for himself exploring the female form, and his cult status continues long after his tragic death in a Los Angeles car crash in 2004.



In this wildly entertaining documentary portrait of a controversial genius, the stars of Newton’s iconic portraits and fashion editorials – from Catherine Deneuve to Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling to Isabella Rossellini – finally give their own interpretation of his life and work. Titillating, unconventional, subversive, his depiction of women still sparks the question: were they subjects or objects? Through candid interviews, featurettes of Newton's own home movies, archival footage (including a pointed exchange with Susan Sontag) and, of course, scores of iconic Newton photographs, this documentary seeks to capture Newton’s legacy and to answer this much pondered question at the centre of his life's work.