One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest 1975

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One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975)

• Director
• Milos Forman
• Starring
• Jack Nicholson
• Louise Fletcher
• Screenplay by
• Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman
• Producer Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas

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Additional Academy Nominations

• Best Supporting Actor (Brad Dourif)
• Best Cinematography
• Best Editing
• Best Original Score

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Trivial Facts

• Kirk Douglas starred on Broadway in the 1963 play
  and held theatrical rights which he assigned to
  son Michael after unsuccessfully attempting to
  film it.
• Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz have also won
  Oscars for other films. Zaentz took home Best
  Picture honors for "Amadeus" and "The English
  Patient" while Douglas won Best Actor for "Wall
  Street".
• Filming was done mainly at Oregon State Hospital
  in Salem, with full cooperation of the
  authorities.

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Trivial Facts

• Among the supporting cast are future stars Danny
  DeVito and Christopher Lloyd.
• Brad Dourif is the voice of Chucky, the killer
  doll in the Childs Play movies.
• The less-than-pleasant conditions and inhumane
  treatment found at similar facilities came as a
  shock to the general public, but the publicity
  helped reform psychological care.

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Trivial Facts

• As a janitor at the Oregon State Hospital, Kesey
  had been witness to the mistreatment and
  mishandling of the misfits who ended up on the
  wards against their will and for all the wrong
  reasons.
• Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando both passed on the
  role. Burt Reynolds was a candidate
• In Sweden it ran in theaters for 11 straight
  years

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Trivial Facts

• The role of Nurse Ratched was turned down by
  five stars
• Ann Bancroft, Colleen Dewhurst, Geraldine Page,
  Ellen Burstyn and Angela Lansbury before Louise
  Fletcher was cast a week before shooting began.

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Trivial Facts

• Nicholson had 10 percent of the gross.
• In fact, in his acceptance speech, Nicholson
  thanked Mary Pickford -- the first actress to
  take a percentage of a film's earnings.

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• As Susanna Kaysen writes in her best-selling
  memoir about her institutionalization, "Girl,
  Interrupted" (also a 1999 movie), "For many of
  us, the hospital was as much a refuge as it was a
  prison" paradoxically, "in a strange way we were
  free."
• So when "Cuckoo" inmates steal a boat and escape
  for a fishing trip, we see that for all their joy
  the boat is merely spinning in circles.
• In the final scene, when Chief (Sampson) escapes
  into the horizon, Forman makes sure that the
  landscape appears threatening as well as
  liberating.
• The reaction scenethe men shoutingwas added
  later after some debate and the only faces we see
  are those of the committed.

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The Crazy" Factor "I must be crazy to be in a
looney-bin like this".

• The thrust of the film is that McMurphy is the
  only one who ISN'T insane because he understands
  that he's screwed up, but no more than the
  average person on the street.
• He just wants to be free and tries to show the
  other men that they have a right to be free too.
• Only the committed patients--Chief and Taber--can
  truly understand why McMurphy wants to be free.
  They don't want to be there, but aren't permitted
  to leave.

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The Crazy" Factor "I must be crazy to be in a
looney-bin like this".

• They can't sympathize with men who are too weak
  to face the outside world when it's only a few
  steps away.
• Watch the last scene carefully and see which
  characters are highlighted--Chief and Taber.
• We are never really sure whether Nicholson is
  crazy or not.

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• The one representation that comes across in a
  negative light is women. Either they're
  domineering witches in white outfits (the nurses)
  or they're bimbos (McMurphy's friends).
• But then again, this film is told from the
  overpowered man's point of view. While the women
  are shown as either sex objects or tyrants, it's
  a necessarily harsh depiction to make the story
  work.

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• Budget 3 million.
• Grossclose to 200 million domestically and
  became the second-highest grossing film of the
  year behind Jaws. .
• seventh-highest-grossing movie ever when it came
  out.
• It has gone on to gross more than 320 million
  worldwide

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Parody(Mad Magazine)
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• The film's pacing is relieved by a group escape
  and fishing boat heist, right out of a keystone
  cops movie, and some stabs at basketball in which
  Nicholson stations the tall Indian under the
  basket.
• This in turn make the shock therapy sequences
  incredibly powerful.

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Nurse Ratched

• Nurse Ratched is one of the most interesting film
  characters of the 1970s.
• Fletcher plays the character so well that she won
  her only Best Actress Oscar for what in truth was
  only a supporting role.
• Ratched is emotionally repressed, and always
  attempts to present a calm demeanor.
• She has turned her ward into an instrument of
  power, and has beaten the inmates into submission
  (mentally) with her inflexible routine.

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Nurse Ratched

• She destroys men rather than building them up or
  trying to cure them.
• Her means of therapy is to humiliate and expose
  weakness, then coldly and calmly break a man's
  spirit.
• She's the proof that if you don't play the
  "game", then the system will run right over you.
• If it's threatening Billy with the wrath of his
  mother or treating Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) like
  a child, Nurse Ratched works on them until they
  become submissive. No treatment--from shock
  therapy to lobotomy--is too rash, no tactic is
  unfair. She's hateful.

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Nurse Ratched

• Ratched is also somewhat sadistic. Her only
  latent pleasure comes from tormenting the
  patients. She does this through ritualized
  control tranquilizers, insipid background music,
  and therapy sessions which accomplish nothing
  except to subject patients to uncomfortable
  personal questions.
• She enjoys setting patients against one another,
  listening to their abusive bickering with a smug
  smile. She is the queen of the ward and has been
  for years.

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Nurse Ratched

• Her hair looks like horns, implying that she's a
  devil twisting these poor men into obedient
  servants of her rules.

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Her Final Attack

• Even doomed Billy had one great moment.
• He loses his stutter when he gains confidence
  with
• the woman.
• Even though his stutter
• comes back worse than
• ever when Nurse Ratched
• rains on his parade, he
• had that one moment.

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R.P. Mc Murphy

• This movie has some great subtleties. McMurphy
  starts out wearing his own clothes, but gradually
  he dresses like all the rest, wearing a complete
  hospital-issued outfit.
• In fact, this is a sterile environment where
  everything is white and bland. Only McMurphy's
  spark can bring any color into their lives.
  Another humorous subtlety is when McMurphy names
  his fellow patients as doctors while on an
  unscheduled fishing trip, except for rival
  Harding (who is called "Mr. Harding"). It's a
  quick insult, but a good one.

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R.P. Mc Murphy

• Some of their names have hidden relevance too.
  McMurphy's initials are R.P.M. which is also an
  abbreviation in measuring velocity and speed.
  McMurphy is certainly a man who moves quickly.
• Billy Bibbit's name even sounds like a stutter.
• Harding's name becomes "Hard On" to McMurphy,
  which implies something fairly obvious.
• Nurse Ratched sounds like wretched. (Mean
  pitiful, unhappy)

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Sexual Tension

• There are smoldering sexual overtones between
  McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.
• However, the hinting of sex in THEIR relationship
  is violent.
• When he attacks Nurse Ratched, it could be taken
  as a rape.

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Rape

• In keeping with the rape theme, Billy claims that
  the others (led by McMurphy) forced him to sleep
  with Candy, one of McMurphy's lady friends who
  sneaks into the hospital.
• In truth, Billy IS pushed into the room after
  trying to weasel out of the "date" which implies
  that he was raped.
• And, of course, McMurphy was put in jail for rape
  in the first place.

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Intertextuality

• Coming out in 1975, which was shortly after the
  Vietnam conflict, this film about men failing to
  adjust to society was timely.
• Men were coming back from the failure in Vietnam
  and many of them had great difficulties adjusting
  to a "sane" society.

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Intertextuality

• In the film AND in Vietnam, not even true
  democracy can win because a higher power is
  calling all the shots. President Nixon pressed on
  despite powerful opposition and Nurse Ratched
  follows rules so stringently that she feels
  compelled to disallow a majority vote to change
  the ward's TV policy because "the meeting was
  adjourned".
• if not particularly wholesome.

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The greatest message of all in "One Flew Over The
Cuckoo's Nest" is that humanity and freedom can
conquer all adversity. Even if it takes a
symbolic gesture to free your spirit (Chief
supplies that gesture in the end), not conforming
to unreasonable rules and finding the courage to
live life your own way isthe most important
belief of all.