Helmut Newton: Frames from the Edge

This is a documentary about HN and his work, driven by some short BTS and interview sequences shot in LA, Monte Carlo and Berlin. The main focus of the film is the models - how Newton chooses them, why they stalk him for being portrayed and how his former famous models like Karl Lagerfeld, Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling and Faye Dunaway experienced the sessions with Newton (and in most cases) experienced this work as revealing for themselves and the rest of the world. It also throws a spotlight on Newton's obsessions with vouyeurism, lingerie, high-heels, nipples and tall women in special and personal childhood memories in general. It also becomes obvious, that Newton was sly in avoiding to pay his models by simply exploiting his own fame as a photographer - a strictly commercial artist he was.

"Frames From The Edge" is a bio-documentary which was actually filmed way back in 1988.

This presentation closely covers the documented photo sessions of noted German photographer, Helmut Newton (who was 68 at the time).

In "Frames From The Edge" - Newton travels from Berlin, to Paris, to Los Angles in order to photograph celebrities and fashion models (all of them strictly female).

All of Newton's photography is well-noted for containing strong elements of kink, fetish, erotica, and yes, even soft-core porn.

*Note* - In 2004 - Helmut Newton (84 at the time) died of heart failure.

Frames from the Edge is a wonderful display of Helmut Newton's breath taking fashion, nude, commercial and portrait photography. Besides the thousands of outstanding still photographs that are shown, the documentary is conventionally narrated but grounded with substantial interviews of both Helmut himself and many other subjects, friends and critics capturing how and why and who the photographs are, when they are not rooted in his idiosyncratic methods of capturing a moment.

I found it flipping around on the TV at 3 in the morning and couldn't tear myself from the tube until it had finished. I am a photographer but none the less it is fascinating to learn what a photographer goes through to create a print in which he has invisioned before the actual shoot. And, I think you'll find the erotic subject matter (of most of his photographs), not only, well, erotic, but after a while you almost become desensitized to the nudity but in an exhilerating way because you really do find yourself seeing the nude in term of texture and shape, light etc...well until near the end we see the setup and shooting session of a woman in the act of riding the back fin of an old 50's black cadillac. hmmm, well, i still think that you'll enjoy his photography, and boy do you see a lot of it. fantastic stuff.