One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)

• Release Date: 1975
• Director(s): Milos Forman
• Writer(s): Bo Goldman; Laurence Hauben
• Principal Actors and Roles: Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched ); Jack Nicholson (R. P. McMurphy); Will Sampson (Chief Bromden); Danny De Vito (Martini); Brad Dourif (Billy Bibbit); Sydney Lassick (Charlie Cheswick); Christopher Lloyd (Max Taber); Mimi Sarkisian (Nurse Pilbow); Vincent Schiavelli (Bruce Frederickson); Marya Small (Candy)
• Book / Story Film Based On: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a classic 1975 film directed by Milos Forman. It was based on the celebrated novel by Ken Kesey, and it stars Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy, an inmate at a mental institution who rebels against the autocratic Nurse Ratched who was played by Louise Fletcher. The film is set in the early 1960s and is a reflection of the so-called counterculture, or the discontent that characterized the era. The movie won Academy Awards in five major areas—Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. Winning five major Oscars is a feat that only two other films have repeated: It Happened One Night (1934) and Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Plot

The film opens with McMurphy arriving at an Oregon mental institution for a psychiatric evaluation. McMurphy had been serving a prison sentence for statutory rape, and he quickly develops a rapport with the other members of his ward. But he also develops an intense dislike for the way that Nurse Ratched controls them. Through drugs and therapy sessions, she appears to have their best interests at heart, but McMurphy perceives that she is actually keeping them cowed in order to lord her power over them.

McMurphy organizes card games and easily wins the other players’ cigarettes, so Nurse Ratched takes the cigarettes away from him and then redistributes them as she sees fit. Angered by her control over him, McMurphy proposes changing the policy in the ward so that he can watch the World Series. He fails to gain enough votes. As McMurphy’s frustration grows, he begins considering escape. He bets the other inmates that he can lift a hydrotherapy device and crash it through a window, but the device proves to be too heavy for him.

McMurphy then steals a bus and takes the men on a fishing trip so that they can get a taste of freedom. Afterward, a therapy session back at the mental institution erupts into a brawl. As punishment for their role in the melee, three of the inmates are sent for electroshock therapy: McMurphy, Chief Bromden, a Native American who appears to be deaf and mute, and another inmate. As he and the Chief wait to undergo the horrifying procedure, McMurphy is elated to learn that the Chief has deluded the hospital staff into believing that he is deaf and mute when, in fact, he is not.

Prior to the therapy, McMurphy also learned that the hospital staff had the right to confine him for as long as it wished without his consent. Dismayed by the revelation, he conspires once again to escape. He instructs his girlfriend Candy, who accompanied him on the fishing trip, and a friend of hers to come to the hospital. McMurphy’s plan is that he will escape with them along with the Chief. However, the two women’s presence, combined with the alcohol that they brought at McMurphy’s request, leads to a drunken, late-night party. McMurphy seeks to bolster the confidence of Billy, a shy inmate who stutters, and he convinces him to have a tryst with Candy. The next morning, Nurse Ratched is appalled to find the ward in disarray, with McMurphy and the others sleeping off the effects of their party. Bolstered by his sexual experience, Billy expresses no remorse for his actions, standing up to Nurse Ratched without his habitual stutter. Nurse Ratched informs Billy that she plans to tell his mother about his encounter. Devastated by this threat, Billy commits suicide by slashing his wrists. Infuriated, McMurphy tries to strangle Nurse Ratched, but an orderly saves her by rendering McMurphy unconscious first.

Sometime later, order has been restored to the ward. Nurse Ratched’s neck is now wrapped in a brace because of the injury caused by McMurphy’s attack. She seems diminished but still in charge. The men believe the unlikely rumor that McMurphy escaped, but the Chief discovers to his horror that McMurphy has been lobotomized. The Chief suffocates McMurphy with a pillow. Then using his superior strength to carry out McMurphy’s plan to crash the hydrotherapy device through the window, he escapes to freedom.

Significance

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest has been the recipient of enormous critical praise. It is ranked thirty-third on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest films.

Audiences have always responded to the film’s powerful storytelling. Although firmly grounded in reality—it was filmed at the actual state hospital in Oregon where the novel is set—it nevertheless has the feeling of an allegory. Its theme of rebellion versus authority, the pressure to conform depicted in the battle between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, is universal but also has a specific resonance. The novel by Kesey, which was published in 1962, foreshadowed his generation’s opposition to the Vietnam War. The film was released in 1975, a time when the full implications of the war were being absorbed by American society.

Chief Bromden is the narrator of the novel, yet in adapting it to the screen, the director, Milos Forman, and the screenwriters Bo Goldman and Laurence Hauben manage to fully preserve his importance. McMurphy provides the Chief with the inspiration that the Native American needs to reenter the outside world. The bonding of the two men, solidified when the Chief carries out McMurphy’s plan for escape, suggests an attempt to begin healing the wounds that Native Americans have suffered at the hands of white Americans, although characteristically for the film, this point is never overtly stated.

Forman was raised in Czechoslovakia and was a victim of both Nazi and Soviet oppression. Clearly, he is drawn to both McMurphy’s hatred of autocracy and the inmate’s strong desire for freedom. Forman and the screenwriters also demonstrate a remarkable gift for comedy. Much of the film’s humor involves McMurphy’s attempts to rouse the men from their lethargy by getting them to share his penchant for juvenile male behavior. These attempts, his inability to function successfully in the world outside the institution, and his admirable defiance of Nurse Ratched prevent McMurphy from ever becoming a sanctimonious figure. Nicholson’s definitive performance as McMurphy is undoubtedly a major reason for the film’s popularity. Given its effect on audiences, it seems likely that its popularity will endure, as immutable as McMurphy’s yearning to breathe free.

Awards and nominations

Won

• Academy Award (1975) Best Picture
• Academy Award (1975) Best Director: Milos Forman
• Academy Award (1975) Best Actor (): Jack Nicholson
• Academy Award (1975) Best Actress: Louise Fletcher
• Academy Award (1975) Best Screenplay (Adapted): Bo Goldman, Laurence Hauben
• Golden Globe (1975) Best Motion Picture (Drama)

Nominated

• Academy Award (1975) Best Cinematography ()
• Academy Award (1975) Best Film Editing ()
• Academy Award (1975) Best Original Score ()
• Academy Award (1975) Best Supporting Actor: Brad Dourif

Bibliography

Anderson, John. "Haskell Wexler, Oscar-Winning Cinematographer, Dies at 93." New York Times. The New York Times Company, 27 Dec. 2015. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.

Canby, Vincent. "Jack Nichelson, the Free Spirit of ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’" New York Times. The New York Times Company, 28 Nov. 1975. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.

Ebert, Roger. "One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest." Review. RogerEbert.com, 2 Feb. 2003. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.

Forman, Milos, and Jan Novak. Turnaround: A Memoir. New York: Villard, 1994. Print.

Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York: Signet, 2007. Reprint.

Mackie, Drew. "Eleven Reasons to Watch One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest." KCET Presents. KCETLink, 3 Feb. 2012. Web. 15 Jan. 2016.