One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (1975)

"...a triumph of the human spirit...  Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide
"A masterpiece.  Mike Clark, USA Today
"A powerful, smashingly effective movie.  Pauline Kael, The New York Times
"A deeply disturbing film...[that is] compelling to the point of obsession...[a] jarring and electrifying drama...  The Motion Picture Guide
"...touching, hilarious, dramatic and completely effective...  VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever

Editor's Note Milos Foreman's ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, based on the novel by Ken Kesey and the play by Dale Wasserman, presents a biting and ultimately tragic satire about mental institutions and the human spirit. A disturbing, witty, and electrifying drama, the film won the 1975 Academy Award for Best Picture. R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a misbehaved con who shirks authority, finds himself in an asylum after faking insanity to get out of work detail in prison. The vivacious troublemaker soon finds himself in a worse kind of prison--one presided over by the repressed, terrifyingly quiet Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), whose set of rules and regulations are meant to suppress patients' psychotic outbursts, and their spirits. It's not long before McMurphy is reaching out to his new inmates, trying desperately to bring life to an otherwise dead atmosphere. To Ratched, however, Nicholson's free spirit is as dangerous as a schizophrenic impulse. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is brilliantly acted by an ensemble that includes Brad Dourif, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, and Danny DeVito.

	Louise Fletcher
	Mwako Cumbuka
	Michael Berryman
	Vincent Schiavelli
	William Duell
	Jack Nicholson
	Danny DeVito
	Brad Dourif
	Dean R. Brooks
	Nathan George
	William Redfield
	Sydney Lassick
	Ted Markland
	Will Sampson
	Louisa Moritz
	Peter Brocco
	Christopher Lloyd
	Marya Small
	Scatman Crothers
	Paul Lambert
	Jack Nitzsche - Composer
	William A. Fraker - Director of Photography
	Lynzee Klingman - Editor
	Sheldon Kahn - Editor
	Bill Butler - Director of Photography
	Haskell Wexler - Director of Photography
	Richard Chew - Editor
	Aggie Guerard Rodgers - Costume Designer
	Lawrence Hauben - Screenwriter
	Ken Kesey - Story
	Saul Zaentz - Producer
	Paul Sylbert - Production Designer
	Bo Goldman - Screenwriter
	Michael Douglas - Producer
	Milos Forman - Director

USA Today
"...[A] masterpiece..." 01/09/1998 p.3D

Chicago Bulletin
"...Nicholson's performance is one of the high points in a long career of enviable rebels..." 02/02/2003 p.5

Sight and Sound
"...[Nicholson's] flamboyant performance is balanced perfectly by superb character turns from Brad Dourif, Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito..." 12/01/2002 p.64

Premiere
"Nicholson's manic and slightly corrosive charm motors this study of one roistering inmate's effect on an entire mental institution." 04/01/2004 p.70

Total Film
"Milos Forman's masterpiece." 03/01/2004 p.5

Entertainment Weekly
"Nicholson's live-wire performance turns what could have been a standard movie malcontent into a martyr." -- Grade: A 09/17/2010

ReelViews 9 of 10
Arguably, some of the issues addressed by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are not as relevant in 2006 as they were in the mid-1970s, but that realization in no way diminishes the film's dramatic impact. This was the second English language film for Czech-born filmmaker Milos Forman, who would go on to win two Oscars (one for this movie and one for Amadeus), and was the picture that catapulted him onto the A-list for directors. The negative aspects of mental health care impugned by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are largely no longer in place today (electroconvulsive therapy is rarely used, frontal lobotomies are not performed), but the film's other themes are germane. On the surface, the movie is about the struggle of wills between patient R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) and Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Beneath the surface, it's about the attempts of an autocratic force to squash the individual...As portrayed by Jack Nicholson, McMurphy is one of cinema's iconic characters, so it may come as a surprise to learn that Nicholson was not the filmmakers' first choice. He was number three on the list, and was only offered the part after it was turned down by Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando. In 1975, Nicholson's star was on the rise. - James Berardinelli

Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) is on every list of favorite films. It was the first film since "It Happened One Night" (1934) to win all five of the top Academy Awards, for best picture, actor (Nicholson), actress (Louise Fletcher), director (Milos Forman) and screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman). It could for that matter have won, too, for cinematography (Haskell Wexler) and editing (Richard Chew). I was present at its world premiere, at the 1975 Chicago Film Festival, in the 3,000-seat Uptown Theatre, and have never heard a more tumultuous reception for a film...Nicholson's performance is one of the high points in a long career of enviable rebels. Jack is a beloved American presence, a superb actor who even more crucially is a superb male sprite. The joke lurking beneath the surface of most of his performances is that he gets away with things because he knows how to, wants to, and has the nerve to. His characters stand for freedom, anarchy, self-gratification and bucking the system, and often they also stand for generous friendship and a kind of careworn nobility. The key to the success of his work in "About Schmidt" is that he conceals these qualities--he becomes one of the patients, instead of the liberating McMurphy. - Roger Ebert