One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest i>; in Latin America, Trapped with no way out) is a 1975 American psychological comedy-drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on the novel of the same name by Ken Kesey. It stars Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Sydney Lassick, William Redfield and Brad Dourif in his film debut.

Filming began in January 1975 and lasted three months, taking place in and around Salem, Oregon, as well as Depoe Bay on the northern Oregon coast. The producers decided to shoot the film at the Oregon State Hospital, a real psychiatric hospital, since this was also the setting of the novel. The hospital still operates (as of 2021), although the original buildings seen in the film have been demolished.

Considered by many to be one of the greatest films ever made, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is ranked 33rd on the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Films of the Century.

Winner of numerous international awards, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was the second film to win the five main Academy Awards: best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and best adapted screenplay, a feat that had already been achieved by It Happened One Night in 1934 and was later achieved in 1991 by The Silence of the Lambs. However, it is the only one of the three that also won those five awards at the Golden Globe Awards and BAFTA Awards. In 1993, the film was considered "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress. and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Argument

In Oregon, in 1963, repeat criminal Randle McMurphy is transferred to a psychiatric hospital after serving a brief sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape with a 15-year-old girl. Although he is not actually mentally ill, McMurphy hopes to avoid hard work and serve the rest of his sentence in a relaxed environment. Upon arriving at the hospital, he encounters the ward run by the strict Nurse Ratched, who subtly suppresses her patients' actions through a passive-aggressive routine, intimidating the patients.

The other patients include the anxious and stuttering Billy Bibbit; Charlie Cheswick, who is prone to childhood tantrums; the delirious Martini; the well-educated and paranoid Dale Harding; the belligerent Max Taber; the epileptic Jim Sefelt and “Big Chief” Bromden, an American Indian who believes himself to be deaf and mute. Ratched soon sees McMurphy's lively, rebellious presence as a threat to his authority, confiscating patients' cigarettes and rationing them. During his time in the room, McMurphy enters into a battle of wits with Ratched. He steals a hospital bus, escapes with several patients to go on a fishing trip, encouraging his friends to be more self-confident.

McMurphy learns that his sentence may be indefinite, and makes plans to escape, urging Chief Bromden to throw a hydrotherapy fountain through a window. He, Bromden and Cheswick get into a fight with the guards after he becomes disturbed by his stolen cigarettes. Ratched sends them to the 'shock tent', and McMurphy discovers that Chief Bromdem can actually talk, pretending to be deaf and mute to avoid getting involved with anyone. After undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, McMurphy returns to the ward pretending to have brain damage, but reveals that the treatment has burdened him even more. McMurphy and Chief Bromdem make plans to escape, but decide to throw a secret Christmas party for their friends after Ratched leaves the hospital for the night.

When night comes, McMurphy grabs two women, Candy and Rose, who came to pick him up from the living room, and bribes the night guard. After a night of bacchanalian partying, McMurphy and Chief Bromdem prepare to escape, inviting Billy to come with them. He refuses, because he says that he is not ready to leave the hospital, although he would like to make a 'friend'. by Candy. Instead, McMurphy convinces him to have sex with Candy in a private room. Ratched arrives in the morning to find the ward in disarray and most of the patients drunk. He catches Billy and Candy together, the former now free of his stuttering, until Ratched threatens to inform his mother about his escape. Billy becomes overcome with fear and locks himself in the doctor's office, where he commits suicide. Enraged, McMurphy strangles Ratched before being knocked out by a guard.

Sometime later, Ratched returns to work, wearing a neck brace, while his voice has become harsher. There are rumors in the room that McMurphy escaped, rather than being taken 'upstairs'. Later that night, Bromdem sees McMurphy being returned to his bed. He discovers from a scar on McMurphy's forehead that he had been lobotomized. Unwilling to allow her to live in such a state, Bromdem chokes his friend to death with a pillow. Finally, Bromdem steels himself and throws the hydrotherapy fountain through the window and escapes into the night, with Taber waking up just in time to see him escape and cheer him on as the others wake up and prepare to follow suit and flee.

Distribution

Production

The title comes from a children's song that his grandmother read to Chief Bromden when he was a child, mentioned in the book.:

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.

Winter, minter, tenderness, corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, bond, fast lock
Three geese in a band
One flew east
One flew west

And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Actor Kirk Douglas—who had originated the role of McMurphy in 1963-1964 for the Broadway stage version of Ken Kesey's novel—had purchased the film rights to the story and for a decade attempted to bring it to the screen. big, but couldn't find a studio willing to do it with him. Eventually, he sold the rights to his son Michael Douglas, who got the film produced, but the elder Douglas, then almost 60, was considered too old for the role of McMurphy. Gene Hackman, James Caan, Marlon Brando, and Burt Reynolds were considered for the lead role, but ultimately all turned him down, and the role went to Jack Nicholson, then 38 years old. Douglas was teamed with Saul. Zaentz to co-produce the film.

The first screenwriter of the film, Lawrence Hauben, presented to Douglas the work of Miloš Forman, whose 1967 Czechoslovak film Fire, firefighters! had certain qualities that reflected the objectives of this script. Forman flew to California and discussed the script per page, describing what he would do, in contrast to other directors who had been approached and who were not so communicative. Forman wrote in 2012: "For me, [history] was not only literature, but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968. The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was allowed or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not."

Zaentz, a voracious reader, felt a kinship with Kesey, so after Hauben's first attempt, he asked Kesey to write the script. Kesey was involved in the early stages of the script's development, but later dropped out. of creative differences with producers over casting and narrative point of view; Ultimately, he filed a lawsuit against the production and won a settlement.

Hal Ashby, who had been an early consideration for the director, suggested Jack Nicholson for the role of McMurphy. Nicholson had never played this type of role before. Production was delayed by about six months due to Nicholson's schedule. Douglas later stated in an interview that "it turned out to be a great blessing: he gave us the opportunity to do the whole thing well."

Cast

Danny DeVito, an old friend of Douglas, was the first to be cast, having played one of the patients, Martini, whom he plays in the subsequent film, in the 1971 off-Broadway production. Chief Bromden, played by Will Sampson, was chosen thanks to the recommendation of Mel Lambert (who played the harbor captain in the fishing scene), a used car salesman who Douglas met on a plane flight when Douglas told him they wanted a &# 34;great guy' to play the role. Lambert's father used to sell cars to Native American customers and six months later he called Douglas to tell him: "The biggest son of a bitch Indian arrived the other day!".

Bud Cort was considered for the role of Billy Bibbit.

Miloš Forman previously considered Shelley Duvall for the character of Candy; Coincidentally, she, Nicholson, and Scatman Crothers (who played Turkle) would be the main cast of the 1980 film adaptation of the novel The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick. While Thieves Like Us (1974) was being screened to see if she was suitable for the role, Forman became interested in Louise Fletcher, who had a supporting role, for the role of Nurse Ratched. A mutual acquaintance, casting director Fred Roos, had already mentioned Fletcher's name as a possibility. Still, it took four or five meetings, over the course of a year, (during which other actresses such as Jeanne Moreau, Colleen Dewhurst, Ellen Burstyn, Angela Lansbury, Anne Bancroft, and Geraldine Page were offered the role) for Fletcher to secure the role of Nurse Ratched. Her last audition was in late 1974, with Forman, Zaentz and Douglas. The day after Christmas, her agent called to say she was expected at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem on January 4 to begin rehearsals.

In 2016, Fletcher recalled that Nicholson's salary was "huge", while the rest of the cast worked at or near scale. She invested 11 weeks and earned $10,000 before taxes.

Tests

Before filming began, a week of rehearsals began on January 4, 1975 in Oregon, during which the actors observed patients in their daily routine and in group therapy. Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher also witnessed electroconvulsive therapy being performed on a patient.

Filming

Filming began in January 1975, and concluded approximately three months later, and was shot on location in and around Salem, Oregon, as well as the coastal town of Depoe Bay, Oregon.

The producers decided to shoot the film at the Oregon State Hospital, a real psychiatric hospital, since this was also the setting of the novel. The hospital's director, Dean Brooks, supported the filming and ultimately ended up playing the character of Dr. John Spivey in the film. Brooks identified a patient for each of the actors to follow, and some cast members even slept in the wards at night. He also wanted to add his patients to the team, to which the producers agreed. Douglas remembers that it was not until later that he learned that many of them were criminally insane.

As Forman did not allow the actors to watch the day's shooting, this caused the cast to lose trust in him, while Nicholson also began to question his performance. Douglas convinced Forman to show Nicholson something, which he did, and restored the actor's confidence.

Haskell Wexler was fired as director of photography and replaced by Bill Butler. Wexler believed his firing was due to his simultaneous work on the documentary Underground, in which he interviewed the radical militant group the Weather Underground while hiding from the law. However, Forman said that he had terminated Wexler's services over artistic differences. Both Wexler and Butler received Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography for the film, although Wexler said there was "only about a minute or two in that movie that I didn't film."

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

The production went over the initial $2 million budget and over schedule, but Zaentz, who was personally financing the film, was able to make up the difference by borrowing against his company, Fantasy Records. The total production budget amounted to 4.4 million dollars.

Premiere

The film premiered at the Sutton and Paramount Theaters in New York City on November 19, 1975. It was the second highest-grossing film released in 1975 in the United States and Canada with a gross of $109 million., one of the seventh highest-grossing films of all time at the time. Since it was released at the end of the year, most of its gross came in 1976 and was the highest for the 1976 calendar year with rentals of $56.5 million.

Worldwide, the film grossed $163,250,000. The picture was the highest-grossing film released by UA up to that time.

Reviews

The performances of Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher received widespread praise and were deserving of the Oscar Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress respectively.

Critics praised the film, sometimes with reservations. Roger Ebert said:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest by Miloš Forman is such a good movie in many of its parts that there is the temptation to forgive her when she goes wrong. But it goes wrong, insisting on making bigger points than your story should really carry, so in the end, the human qualities of the characters are lost in the meaning of everything. And yet there are those moments of brilliance.

Ebert later placed the film on his 'Great Movies' list. A.D. Murphy of Variety magazine also wrote a mixed review, as did Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times:

A comedy that cannot fully sustain its tragic conclusion, too schematic to be honestly touching, but it is acted with such a sense of life that one responds to its demonstration of humanity if not to its scheduled metaphors.

The film opened and closed with original music by composer Jack Nitzsche, with a mysterious musical saw (played by Robert Armstrong) and glasses of wine. On the score, critic Steven McDonald:

The avant-garde nature of the film extends to the score, giving it a deeply disturbing sensation at times, even when it seems to be relatively normal. Music has a tendency to always be a little out of place and, from time to time, it completely leans towards a small and strange world of its own...

The film won 5 Oscars at the 48th Academy Awards ceremony. These include Best Actor for Jack Nicholson, Best Actress for Louise Fletcher, Best Director for Forman, Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman. The film currently has a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating. on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 83 critics, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The on-screen battle between Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher serves as a personal microcosm of the culture wars of the 1970s, and a testament to the director's vision that the film retains its power more than three decades later.

Kesey himself claimed to have never seen the film, but said he didn't like what he knew about it, a fact confirmed by Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote: "The first time I heard this story, it was through the film starring Jack Nicholson. A movie that Kesey once told me he didn't like.

In 1993, the film was considered "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.

Awards and nominations

In 2015, the film was ranked 59th on the list of "100 Greatest American Movies" from the BBC, voted for by film critics around the world.

American Film Institute

• 100 years... 100 films – #20
• 100 Herres and villains:
  • Nurse Ratched – #5 Villana
  • R.P. McMurphy - Heroe (Nominated)
• 100 years... 100 inspirations – #17
• 100 Years... 100 Films (Anniversary Edition) – #33