One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American psychological comedy-drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on the novel by Ken Kesey. The film stars Jack Nicholson as a new patient at a mental institution and Louise Fletcher as the domineering head nurse. Will Sampson, Danny DeVito, Sydney Lassick, William Redfield, Christopher Lloyd and Brad Dourif play supporting roles, with the latter two making their feature film debuts.

Originally announced in 1962 with Kirk Douglas starring, the film took 13 years to develop. Filming finally began in January 1975 and lasted three months, on location in Salem, Oregon and the surrounding area, and in Depoe Bay on the north Oregon coast. The producers shot the film in the Oregon State Hospital, an actual psychiatric hospital, which is also the novel's setting. The hospital is still in operation, though the original buildings in the film have been demolished. The film was released on November 19, 1975.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest received critical acclaim, and is considered by critics and audiences to be one of the greatest films ever made. It is the second of three films to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Director, and Screenplay) following It Happened One Night (1934), and preceding 1991's The Silence of the Lambs. It won numerous Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards. In 1993, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Additionally, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was ranked No. 33 on the American Film Institute's updated 100 Years... 100 Movies list in 2007.

In 1963 Oregon, Randle McMurphy is incarcerated for the statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl, (which he claims he committed under the assumption that she was an 18-year-old) with five previous arrests for assault. He feigns mental illness so he can be moved to a mental institution and avoid hard labor at a work farm. The medical ward is dominated by the cold, passive-aggressive Nurse Ratched who intimidates her patients and maintains control through fear.

The other patients include young, anxious, stuttering Billy Bibbit; Charlie Cheswick, who is prone to temper tantrums; delusional, child-like Martini; the articulate and repressed Dale Harding; belligerent and profane Max Taber; epileptics Jim Sefelt and Bruce Fredrickson; quiet but violent-minded Scanlon; tall, deaf-mute Native American Chief Bromden; and several others with chronic conditions.

Ratched sees McMurphy's lively, rebellious presence as a threat to her authority, to which she responds by confiscating and rationing the patients' cigarettes and suspending their card-playing privileges. McMurphy finds himself in a battle of wills against Ratched. One night, he makes a bet with the other inmates that he can escape by tearing a hydrotherapy fountain off its hinges and throwing it out the window, but is unable to lift it. Shortly after, he steals a charter bus, picks up his girlfriend Candy, and escapes with several patients to go fishing, exposing them to the outside world and encouraging them to discover their abilities and find self-confidence.

After an orderly tells him that his sentence term does not apply in the mental institution, and can become indefinite, McMurphy questions why no one told him this before. He also learns that he, Chief, and Taber are the only non-chronic patients who have been involuntarily committed; the others have committed themselves voluntarily but are too afraid to leave. After Cheswick bursts into a fit and demands his cigarettes from Ratched, McMurphy starts a fight with the orderlies, and Chief intervenes to help him.

McMurphy, Chief, and Cheswick are sent to the disturbed ward after the fight, and Chief reveals to McMurphy that he can speak and hear normally, having faked deaf-muteness to avoid engaging with anyone. The two make plans to escape to Canada together. McMurphy is subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, and returns to the ward pretending to be brain-damaged before revealing that the treatment has made him even more determined to defeat Ratched. McMurphy and Chief plan to throw a secret Christmas party for their friends after Ratched and the orderlies leave for the night before making their escape.

McMurphy sneaks Candy and her friend Rose into the ward, each bringing bottles of alcohol for the party, and bribes the night orderly Turkle to allow the party. McMurphy and Chief prepare to escape, inviting Billy to come with them. Billy refuses but asks for a "date" with Candy; McMurphy arranges for him to have sex with her. McMurphy and the others get drunk, and McMurphy falls asleep instead of escaping with Chief.

Ratched arrives in the morning to find the ward in disarray; most patients have passed out. She discovers Billy and Candy together and aims to embarrass Billy in front of everyone. Billy manages to overcome his stutter and stands up to Ratched. When she threatens to tell his mother, Billy cracks under the pressure and reverts to stuttering, before Ratched orders he be locked in a separate room as punishment. McMurphy punches an orderly when trying to escape out of a window with the Chief, causing the other orderlies to intervene. Suddenly, Billy kills himself by slitting his throat with broken glass, causing a huge commotion. Ratched tries to control the situation by calling for the day's routine to continue as usual, but her nonchalant reaction enrages McMurphy, who begins strangling her. The orderlies subdue McMurphy, saving Ratched's life.

Sometime later, Ratched is wearing a neck brace and speaking weakly, and Harding leads the now-unsuspended card-playing. McMurphy is nowhere to be found, leading to rumors that he has escaped. Later that night, Chief sees McMurphy being returned to his bed. He is initially elated that McMurphy had kept his promise not to escape without him, before discovering that McMurphy has been lobotomized. After tearfully embracing McMurphy, Chief smothers him to death with a pillow. He then rips the hydrotherapy fountain off its mountings and throws it through the window, as McMurphy had earlier attempted. He escapes, with Taber and the other inmates awakening to cheer him on.

Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick "R.P." McMurphy
Louise Fletcher as Nurse Mildred Ratched
Will Sampson as "Chief" Bromden
William Redfield as Dale Harding
Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit
Sydney Lassick as Charlie Cheswick
Christopher Lloyd as Max Taber
Danny DeVito as Martini
Dean Brooks as Dr. John Spivey
William Duell as Jim Sefelt
Vincent Schiavelli as Bruce Frederickson
Michael Berryman as Ellis
Alonzo Brown as Attendant Miller
Mwako Cumbaka as Attendant Warren
Nathan George as Attendant Washington
Marya Small as Candy
Scatman Crothers as Night Guard Turkle
Phil Roth as Woolsey
Louisa Moritz as Rose
Peter Brocco as Col. Matterson
Delos V. Smith Jr. as Scanlon
Josip Elic as Bancini
Mimi Sarkisian as Nurse Pilbow
Ted Markland as Hap Arlich
Mary Costa as Mrs. Johnson

Principal photography began on January 13, 1975, and concluded approximately three months later. The film was shot on location in Salem, Oregon, the surrounding area, and the coastal town of Depoe Bay, Oregon.

The producers decided to shoot the film in the Oregon State Hospital, an actual mental hospital, as this is also the setting of the novel.[24] The hospital's director, Dean Brooks, was supportive of the filming and eventually ended up playing the character of Dr. John Spivey in the film. Brooks identified a patient for each of the actors to shadow, and some of the cast even slept on the wards at night. He also wanted to incorporate his patients into the crew, to which the producers agreed. Douglas recalls that it was not until later that he found out that many of them were criminally insane.

For the group therapy scenes, Forman and his cinematographer Haskell Wexler used three cameras to record all shots for the scene simultaneously. Although this was unusual for the time and more expensive, it allowed Forman and Wexler to capture the actors' authentic reactions to each other.

As Forman did not allow the actors to see the day's filming, this led to the cast losing confidence in him, while Nicholson also began to wonder about his performance. Douglas convinced Forman to show Nicholson something, which he did, and restored the actor's confidence.

Haskell Wexler was fired as cinematographer and replaced by Bill Butler. Wexler believed his dismissal was due to his concurrent work on the documentary Underground, in which the radical militant group the Weather Underground were being interviewed while hiding from the law. However, Forman said he had terminated Wexler's services over artistic differences. Douglas also claimed Wexler wanted to get Forman fired in order to direct the film himself, and was fueling the cast's distrust of Forman and lack of confidence in their own performances. Both Wexler and Butler received Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, though Wexler said there was "only about a minute or two minutes in that film I didn't shoot".

According to Butler, Nicholson refused to speak to Forman: "...[Jack] never talked to Miloš at all, he only talked to me".

The production went over the initial budget of $2 million and over-schedule, but Zaentz, who was personally financing the movie, was able to come up with the difference by borrowing against his company, Fantasy Records. The total production budget came to $4.4 million.