One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ***** (1975, Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Will Sampson, William Redfield, Brad Dourif, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Scatman Crothers) – Classic Movie Review 2,467

The exhilarating 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is only the second to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor in Lead Role, Actress in Lead Role, Director, and Screenplay).

Director Milos Forman’s exhilarating 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the first film since 1934’s It Happened One Night to win all five top Academy Awards and a glittering triumph for all the participants. Its 1976 Academy Awards wins for Best Picture, Best Actor in Lead Role, Actress in Lead Role, Director, and Screenplay were not repeated until 1991 by The Silence of the Lambs.

There were four other Oscar nominations, including Brad Dourif for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Haskell Wexler and Bill Butler for Best Cinematography, Jack Nitzsche for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score and Richard Chew, Lynzee Klingman and Sheldon Kahn for Best Film Editing.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in 1963 Oregon, when the recidivist, anti-authoritarian criminal Randle Patrick ‘Mac’ McMurphy, who is serving a short sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl, is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation.

Jack Nicholson is absolutely brilliant as the grinning misfit McMurphy who enters and transforms the asylum, inspiring his fellow inmates to rebel, to the vast angry annoyance of the strong-willed, steely, unyielding Nurse Mildred Ratched, the head nurse of McMurphy’s ward. Nurse Ratched is played with incredibly chilling authority in an equally remarkable performance by Louise Fletcher, who never matched her brilliance here.

Screenwriters Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman effectively turn Ken Kesey’s legendary, iconic 1962 counter-culture bestseller into a funny and moving screenplay. They keep the novel’s metaphor of the hospital as the conformist society and the nurse as the dead hand of the state, but emphasise the elating feeling of victory for the human spirit, keeping the movie more upbeat than the book.

[Spoiler alert] Among the non-Oscar-winning cast members, Will Sampson stands out a mile as the Native American who eventually breaks away to freedom, though William Redfield, Brad Dourif, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Scatman Crothers (as Orderly Turkle), Dean Brooks (as Dr John Spivey) and Vincent Schiavelli (as Bruce Frederickson) are unforgettable too.

McMurphy’s fellow patients are nervous, stuttering young Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif); childish, angry Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick); the delusional Martini (Danny DeVito); highly strung, well-educated paranoid Dale Harding (William Redfield), belligerent, swearing Max Taber (Christopher Lloyd); epileptic Jim Sefelt (William Duell); and ‘Chief’ Bromden (Will Sampson), an imposing Native American believed to be deaf and mute.

The title comes from a nursery rhyme read to Chief Bromden as a child by his grandmother: ‘Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn, Wire, briar, limber lock, Three geese in a flock, One flew East, One flew West And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.’

It was shot over three months at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon, the setting of the novel, as well as the surrounding area and on the Oregon coast.

Kirk Douglas played it on the Broadway stage in the play version by Dale Wasserman, and had spent years vainly trying to get backers interested in filming it with him a the star. When he finally gave up, he passed the torch to his son, Michael Douglas, who joined Saul Zaentz as producer and succeeded where his father had failed.

Michael Douglas provides an early role for his buddy and Sixties room-mate DeVito, who was also in the original play version. Kirk Michael later said about Michael if he knew how successful he’d become, he’d have been nicer to him!

According to co-cinematographer Bill Butler, Jack Nicholson refused to speak to Milos Forman and spoke only to him instead. Butler shared the Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography with co-cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who died on December 27 2015, aged 93.

Bill Butler (April 7, 1921 – April 5, 2023) completed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) after Haskell Wexler was fired from the production, and was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography jointly with Wexler. He is also remembered for The Conversation (1974), Jaws (1975), and three Rocky sequels. Butler replaced a fired Wexler  twice: previously on The Conversation (1974).

Saul Zaentz died on January 3 2014, aged 92.

The brilliant Czech-born director Milos Forman, who won Best Director Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus, and was nominated for The People vs Larry Flynt (1996), died on 13 April 2018, aged 86.

Louise Fletcher (July 22, 1934 – September 23, 2022).

Estelle Louise Fletcher (July 22, 1934 – September 23, 2022) died at her home in Montdurausse, France, on 23 September 2022, aged 88.

Miloš Forman saw Fletcher in Robert Altman’s 1974 Thieves Like Us and cast her as Nurse Ratched, becoming only the third actress to win an Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for a single performance, after Audrey Hepburn and Liza Minnelli.

She followed Cuckoo’s Nest with Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Cheap Detective (1978), The Lady in Red (1979), The Magician of Lublin (1979), Brainstorm (1983), Firestarter (1984), Invaders From Mars (1986), Flowers in the Attic (1987), Two Moon Junction (1988), Best of the Best (1989), Blue Steel (1990), Virtuosity (1995), High School High (1996), and Cruel Intentions (1999).

Louise Fletcher with her Academy Award for Best Actress.

Bo Goldman, who won two Academy Awards for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (jointly with Lawrence Hauben) and for Melvin and Howard (1980), died on July 25, 2023, aged 90. He also wrote The Rose (1979), Shoot the Moon (1982), Scent of a Woman (1992), and Meet Joe Black (1998).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,467

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