One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Starring
Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher
Director
Milos Forman
Awards
Academy Awards
Best Actor Jack Nicholson
Best Actress - Louise Fletcher
Best Director - Milos Forman
Best Picture
Best Adapted Screenplay - Lawrence
Hauben and Bo Goldman
Academy Award Nominations
Best Supporting Actor - Brad Dourif
Plot Synopsis
An award-winning cinematic adaptation of Ken Kesey's celebrated
novel that captures the rebellious and anarchic energy of the 1960s . A mental patient
bucks the rigid administrative system at the asylum where he's incarcerated - and pays a
high price for his nonconformity. McMurphy, who's seemingly just a misdiagnosed free
spirit, invigorates the previously zombified patients with his independent ways. But the
authoritarian staff cannot accept such behavior, and they'll do whatever it takes to bring
him down.
Film Notes
"One of the key movies of the 1970s, when exciting,
groundbreaking, personal films were still being made in Hollywood, Milos Forman's One
Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest emphasized the humanistic story at the heart of Ken
Kesey's more hallucinogenic novel. Jack Nicholson was born to play the part of Randle
Patrick McMurphy, the rebellious inmate of a psychiatric hospital who fights back against
the authorities' cold attitudes of institutional superiority, as personified by Nurse
Ratched (Louise Fletcher). It's the classic antiestablishment tale of one man asserting
his individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist system - and it works on every
level. Forman populates his film with memorably eccentric faces, and gets such freshly
detailed and spontaneous work from his ensemble that the picture sometimes feels like a
documentary. Unlike a lot of films pitched at the "youth culture" of the 1970s, One
Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest really hasn't dated a bit, because the qualities of human
nature that Forman captures, playfulness, courage, inspiration, pride, stubbornness, are
universal and timeless. The film swept the Academy Awards for 1976, winning in all the
major categories (picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay) for the first time since
Frank Capra's It Happened One Night
in 1931." (Jim Emerson, Amazon.com)
Film debut for actor Brad Dourif. Color by DeLuxe. Co-produced by
Fantasy Films. The film had an approximate budget of $3 million. Additional cast: Delos V.
Smith Jr. (Scanlon), Mimi Sarkisian (Nurse Pilbow), and Nathan George (Attendant
Washington). On November 3, 1963 the stage adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel was brought to
Broadway, starring Kirk Douglas as McMurphy; Gene Wilder also appeared in the show.
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