Cowards Bend the Knee

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Overview

The wildly idiosyncratic Canadian auteur Guy Maddin created this exercise in semi-autobiographical impressionism. Guy Maddin Darcy Fehr is a gifted but weak-willed hockey player who has helped drive the Winnipeg Maroons to a championship season. However, Maddin's sense of triumph is dashed when his girlfriend Veronica Amy Stewart informs him that she's pregnant. Incapable of dealing with parenthood, Maddin escorts Veronica to The Black Silhouette, a combination beauty shop and brothel where a cross-dressing ...
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More About This Product

Overview

The wildly idiosyncratic Canadian auteur Guy Maddin created this exercise in semi-autobiographical impressionism. Guy Maddin Darcy Fehr is a gifted but weak-willed hockey player who has helped drive the Winnipeg Maroons to a championship season. However, Maddin's sense of triumph is dashed when his girlfriend Veronica Amy Stewart informs him that she's pregnant. Incapable of dealing with parenthood, Maddin escorts Veronica to The Black Silhouette, a combination beauty shop and brothel where a cross-dressing doctor performs abortions. As Veronica is on the operating table, Maddin spies Meta Melissa Dionisio and immediately falls in love with her, leaving Veronica behind. While Meta is attracted to Maddin, she will not grant him her favors until he passes a test -- he must track down the man who murdered her father and kill him using her late father's own blue hands. Shot on Super-8 film, Cowards Bend the Knee was originally created by Maddin as an art installation presented at a Toronto gallery and at the Rotterdam Film Festival, where viewers watched the film in six-minute segments through peepholes; it was later released in a conventional full-screen version.
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Special Features

Audio commentary by Guy Maddin; Love-Chaunt Workbooks: Four short-film blueprints from a lost Maddin feature, plus audition reels; Behind-the-scenes look at Maddin's new feature-and Cowards companion piece-The Brand upon the Brain!; Cowards photo archive: Production photos, plus vintage beauty shop and hockey shots from Mddin's personal collection; Watch the film as a whole, or as 10 individual short films; Plus: Artistic statement, character sketches, missing chapter script excerpt and the essay" A Note on Hands"
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Editorial Reviews

All Movie Guide
Though known for creating arresting images culled from a dreamy remembrance of movies from the late-silent/early-sound period of the late '20s/early '30s, director Guy Maddin draws off his own personal stock of Freudian symbolism as much as film history. Cowards Bend the Knee primarily concerns issues of masculinity -- the neurotic nightmare surrounding "Guy Maddin" Darcy Fehr attempting to live up to his notions of what it means to be a man. It takes place in the director's native Winnipeg, primarily at the Winnipeg Arena. Maddin was apparently born there, he spent a lot of time there as his dad worked as treasurer for the Canadian National Hockey Team when the Maroons were the home team, and Maddin once wrote, "In the Winnipeg Arena, my inner and outer landscapes were one and the same thing." The stadium, with a wax museum of famous players located above the rink, is depicted as a combination Eden/Valhalla of manhood. It's no surprise that sex, as befits the film's origins in peep-show segments, plays a prominent role, from the lust-driven blunders Maddin makes to appease Meta Melissa Dionisio to the slapstick homoeroticism of the Maroons' locker room. The drama, while clearly tapping into personal hang-ups, is operatic enough not to become maddeningly obtuse and is bolstered by Maddin's highly original sense of humor that makes the film equally comic and tragic. The imagery is amazing, the overall effect brilliantly done, and the story accessible enough given its experimental leanings.
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Product Details

  • Release Date: 9/20/2005
  • UPC: 795975106832
  • Original Release: 2003

    • Rating:

  • Source: Zeitgeist Films
  • Presentation: Subtitled / B&W / Pan & Scan
  • Sound: silent
  • Time: 1:04:00
  • Format: DVD
  • Sales rank: 64,102

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits
Darcy Fehr Guy Maddin
Melissa Dionisio
Amy Stewart
Tara Birtwhistle
Louis Negin
Mike Bell
Victor Cowie
David Stuart Evans
Bernard Lesk
Herdis Maddin
Mirrion Martin
Rurum Micbride
Henry Mogrtas
Moses Guest Toby
Technical Credits
Guy Maddin Director, Cinematographer, Screenwriter
Shawna Connor Production Designer
John Gurdebeke Editor
Tracy McBride Production Manager
Meg McMillan Costumes/Costume Designer
Philip Monk Producer
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Scene Index

Disc #1 -- Cowards Bend the Knee
1. The Sperm Players [6:23]
1. A Squeeze of the Hand [6:09]
1. Upon a Pile of Hockey Gloves [6:09]
1. Meta's Bedroom [6:09]
1. Fisty [6:08]
1. Wax Tryst [6:09]
1. The Blue Hands of Vengeance [6:09]
1. Another Wax Tryst [6:09]
1. Hands Off [6:09]
1. The Furies [8:29]
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Menu

Disc #1 -- Cowards Bend the Knee
   Play the Movie
   Chapters
   Behyond the Peephole
      Audio Commentary
         This Commentary By Director Guy Maddin Was Recorded in the Summer of 2005 in Winnipeg, Manitoba: Commentary On
         This Commentary By Director Guy Maddin Was Recorded in the Summer of 2005 in Winnipeg, Manitoba: Commentary Off
      Love-Chaunt Workbooks
         Intro
         Fuseboy
         Rooster Workshop
         Zookeeper Workshop
         Chimney Workshop
         Audition One
         Audition Two
         Play All
      Brand Upon the Brain!
         Play
      Photo Archive
         Lil's
         Marrons
         Production
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