One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest [1975]

Taking another look at the picture after all these years, it's a surprise that all the unknown actors who seemed like real mental patients have graduated to becoming prolific character actor stars: Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, Brad Dourif, the late Will Sampson, Sidney Lassick, Michael Berryman. Unlike many Best Picture Oscar winners, this deals with profound subject matter without seeming self-important: Forman's approach and all-round great acting make it play as a small character story as well as a Big Statement about the human condition. Full marks also for Jack Nitzsche's musical saw-based score.

On the DVD: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest comes to DVD in a two-disc special edition with a great-looking anamorphic 1.85:1 print and 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, plus tracks in French and Italian and optional subtitles in half a dozen languages. Disc 2 has the trailer, about 13 minutes of deleted scenes (mostly from the first third of the film, and all pretty good) and a making-of retrospective documentary with interesting material from producers Michael Douglas (who inherited the rights from Kirk) and Saul Zaentz, Forman, screenwriter Bo Goldman and many cast-members (though not Nicholson). There's also a commentary track by Forman, Douglas and others which repeats a few things from the documentary but also goes into more scene-specific detail about the development and shooting. --Kim Newman

Incredibly, no. The ultimate star in a film that has no shortage of up-and-coming luminaries as well as Nicholson (D de Vito for one) is Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched. I am never going to forget that mask-like expressionless face and that ever-rational, implacable, ever-modulated voice mouthing those soulless, uncomprehending, the-system-is-right banalities. Above all, I am never going to forget that hair. Among the many touches of genius in this production, that hairstyle is the ultimate. I simply could not take my eyes off it. The name is effective too, and I shall continue to believe until someone proves me wrong that it was an inspired borrowing from Jane Eyre -- the dreadful and sadistic Miss Skatcherd brought up to date and given a 20th-century twist.

This film is never going to become dated as long as these polarities continue to repel each other. I saw it at all only because my son showed it to me. It is relevant to my generation, it is relevant to his, and I can't foresee when it is not going to be relevant.


Wonderful, disturbing film masterpiece   August 31, 2004
Christian McCallister (The waters of the Great Lakes)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful

In 1976, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" won the five top Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay), and was the first movie in 45 years to do so. It deserved it. This film is inspiring, disturbing, tragic, triumphant, and gripping.

Jack Nicholson, playing the part he was destined to play, is Randall Patrick McMurphy, a rebellious misfit who convinces people that he belongs in a mental institution so that he can get out of a sentence on a work-farm. He arrives on the secure psychiatric ward and runs head-on into a brick wall named Nurse Ratched, played superbly by Louise Fletcher. Nurse Ratched is in absolute control of herself and the ward, and rules quietly and calmly but with an iron fist. The ward is populated with a very strange group of misfits (it is a psychiatric ward after all), including a young Danny DeVito, a young Brad Dourif, and a young Christopher Lloyd. They follow Nurse Ratched's harmonious routine, day in and day out, with all the appearance of striving for improvement, but with no real gains being made by anyone. Of course, the calm, quiet, go-nowhere routine under a serenely despotic Nurse Ratched is loathsome to Randall Patrick McMurphy, and the two elemental forces of Ratched and McMurphy clash and clash and clash. Who wins the battle? In a concrete way, Nurse Ratched eventually wins. On a bigger level, you make the call.

Two supporting actors should also have won Oscars (sharing it would have been perfect). Will Sampson plays a huge, mute Native American who was committed after killing his father (nowadays it would be called euthanasia). He provides the film with one of the most eerily and tragically triumphant endings in movie history (with very eery music to match). Brad Dourif plays a neurotic, stuttering young man who longs to be normal but is terrified of his mother's disapproval (and his mother is good friends with Nurse Ratched).

This movie addresses themes of independence, individuality, the question of where one's personal rights end and society's rights start, and the definition of what is "normal". Who is more sane, Nurse Ratched or Randall Patrick McMurphy? The easy answer is Nurse Ratched. I'm not sure. I wouldn't want either for a next-door neighbor. Watch the movie and ask yourself that question. It's a tough one to answer. A very rich film.


This isn't the novel   October 19, 2002
N. J. Morley
12 out of 38 found this review helpful

I am sure that in many ways this is a fantastic film. Many other people seem to think so. But I'm afraid I came to this film after reading the book, and much of what I love so much about Ken Kesy's novel is simply not there.

The most obvious difference is also the most forgivable. The unique voice of Chief is lost totally. But then, it would be almost impossible to carry over to film . . .

What I missed most was all the subtlies that make the book such wonderful reading. There doesn't seem to be half as much of a sense of 'the system', just Jack Nicholson being a loony. There's almost no sense of McMurphy's slow descent into psychopathy as he's ground down to fit the hole society has made for him, and 'the combine' is, I think, never even mentioned, let alone felt. You also get little sense of McMurphy's individualism affecting the other inmates and doing for them what Nurse Ratchet's combine never even came close to doing. You also get no sense of the Chief being slowly drawn out of his shell, slowly 'built up', until he's big enough to literally smash his way out of the combine.

The headline says it all. Don't watch this and expect the same thing as the novel. For me, to be honest, it felt hiddeously slashed to make it fit a very narrowing genre.