Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher are worthy adversaries in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with Miloš Forman's more grounded and morally ambiguous approach to Ken Kesey's surrealistic novel yielding a film of outsized power. Read critic reviews
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
1975, Drama, 2h 13m
117 Reviews 250,000+ RatingsWhat to know
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Movie Info
When Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) gets transferred for evaluation from a prison farm to a mental institution, he assumes it will be a less restrictive environment. But the martinet Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) runs the psychiatric ward with an iron fist, keeping her patients cowed through abuse, medication and sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. The battle of wills between the rebellious McMurphy and the inflexible Ratched soon affects all the ward's patients.
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Rating: R
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Genre: Drama
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Original Language: English
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Director: Milos Forman
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Producer: Michael Douglas, Saul Zaentz
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Writer: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman
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Release Date (Theaters): original
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Release Date (Streaming):
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Runtime:
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Distributor: Pioneer Entertainment, United Artists, Warner Home Vídeo, Republic Pictures
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Sound Mix: Mono
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Aspect Ratio: 35mm, Flat (1.85:1)
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Critic Reviews for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Audience Reviews for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is brimming with memorable characters. Films today just don't have that sense of story and character, it's more visual narrative and overacting. There's no overacting here, every performance is understated in their own unique way. Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, is cool, calm and collected and yet her mannerisms exude terror. Her authoritative figure and soft spoken voice just adds to this, so much so that the patients in the state mental hospital are petrified of her. Randle McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, is just a common criminal who to start with plays along with the other patients. However, upon the realisation that he may not ever get out...he starts to find ways in order to escape. I found his performance captivating and clearly he is great and portraying crazy people, just look at The Shining. He is able to control the smaller scenes with his charisma and own the bigger crazier scenes with his excitable energy. His raucous behaviour puts the other patients at risk of certain procedures such as the controversial electro therapy. What really compelled me was the similarities between the mental patients and the outside world, to which McMurphy says that there is no difference. The screenplay for that scene, well every scene actually, brings life to each character. From the first 30 minutes, every character's personality and state of mind is indicated to us. There are no boring characters, each of them have unique qualities and that is something you don't see in every film. Loved the fishing boat scene, adored Chief's and McMurphy's friendship and appreciated the time and effort spent on character interactions. The way they talk to each other in the therapy sessions just felt natural, and to balance the screen time between them all was just genius. You just don't get films like these anymore.
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Equal parts uplifting and depressing, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is a darkly humorous look into the flawed psychiatric system of the 1960s - which makes the film even more impressive that it still holds relevance and importance today.
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And this doesn't have a 100% rating on RT because...........?
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest rests largely on the shoulders of its leading man, but whenever Nicholson is onscreen the film is infectiously fun; its emotional depth ties in well with the comedic shenanigans.
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