63
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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
A fascinating film.
60
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
A gossipy portrait of a charmingly naughty boy whose genius is perhaps best appreciated on a second viewing with the sound off and the eyes wide open.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Never intending to rationalize away the seedier aspects of Newton's work, the film hopes instead to make us recognize the humor and inventiveness lurking there as well — and to persuade us that an artist's unruly erotic imagination doesn't necessarily tell us much about what he thinks of women.
83
Would his work, or any work that walks the line the way his does, be tolerated today? It’s not explicitly in this documentary, but perhaps something worth asking after watching a film about an artist who experienced fascism first-hand.
70
An engaging and surprisingly playful documentary about the man who was arguably the most transgressive photographer to emerge from the 1960s and ’70s.
67
Austin Chronicle by Richard Whittaker
If von Boehm adds anything to what's known of Newton's life, it's to explore his iconography, about which he was very honest. His dismissiveness of photography as insightful, his enigmatic storytelling, and the great contradiction of his work, of how a young Jewish boy who was almost murdered during Kristallnacht absorbed so much of the imagery of the Reich's most artistic propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.
75
It’s a fun, generally brisk biography, one whose tone might be the artist’s credo. Newton declared that there are “only two dirty words” in any of the three languages he spoke — “art” and “good taste.” He never let either limit what he was trying to say.
75
While the film is hardly as transgressive as its subject, it manages to be unexpectedly moving, and a nostalgic time capsule of an art-world rebel whose unorthodox methods and decidedly politically incorrect vision couldn’t exist today.