One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of those seminal films that helped launch careers and helped solidify Jack Nicholson as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. A year after starring in another seminal film in Chinatown, Nicholson was at his best yet again in Cuckoo’s Nest. He brought a bravado and panache to the role of McMurphy that no one else could have. He showed in Cuckoo’s Nest that he was indeed a unique talent that could carry a film almost single-handedly and make it great. I don’t mean to infer that Nicholson was the only thing that made Cuckoo’s Nest great, but I don’t think that it can be argued that it wouldn’t have been nearly as great a film without the performance that Nicholson gave.
McMurphy is one of those anti-heroes that we probably shouldn’t like because he’s a criminal trying to scam the system by pretending to be mentally ill so that he can serve his sentence in a psychiatric ward rather than a work camp. However, Nicholson’s portrayal of McMurphy as a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, and his desire to bring life to the other inmates make him a likable character. From a character development standpoint McMurphy goes through a great character arc. He experiences very little outer growth, but inside he becomes much more empathetic to those around him. Ironically it is that empathy that contributes to his tragic undoing. What McMurphy also does in this film is he affects the change of the supporting characters, whether it’s the Chief or Cheswick or Martini or the stuttering Billy Bibbitt. McMurphy helps all of them gain some measure of dignity, however small, that Nurse Ratched has always denied them.
As for the film itself, I think it’s fantastic however the second half of the film is stronger than the first half. It takes a while to get going, but once it does get going, it’s highly entertaining, tense in certain places and uplifting in others. I hadn’t seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest since I was a teenager, and back then I would have missed a lot of the subtleties that were going on. It seems to me that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is very much a character-driven film. There is a well-structured storyline and the plot is fairly simple. There aren’t a ton of subplots that you have to pay attention to like in The Godfather Part II or Chinatown, and there isn’t really a rising level of tension until we get to the climax of the film. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is all about McMurphy and his failed attempt at working the system, but his successful, albeit partly tragic, work in humanizing a group of men that had been dehumanized by the very system that was supposed to take care of them.’
That brings be to what really makes this film so powerful and that is its thematic component. Ultimately I think the film’s strength as a thematically powerful and deep film is what won it the Oscar. I’ll dive deeper in to that in a bit, but this is a film that requires thought. This is a film that you can’t just passively watch. Like so many other Best Picture winners before it, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a film that requires active participation on the part of the viewer. That’s not to say that the viewer becomes a part of the story, but you have to watch this film as though you were reading a book. You have to actively think about what’s going on, primarily because the storyline is so straight forward. You need to pay attention to how McMurphy is building up these guys’ confidence.
What’s great about it is that it starts out as a prank. At first, all he wants to do is make Nurse Ratched mad and maybe put her in her place a little bit. The way he does that is by sneaking himself and the guys out of the institution for a day of charter fishing. He does it by using Chief’s height to beat the orderlies in a game of pick-up basketball. Since he’s kind of a selfish guy at first, but as he’s trying to upset Nurse Ratched, he starts to gain affection and empathy for the other guys in the ward. It happens in a totally organic way, and you almost don’t even see it happening while the film is going on. You watch the film and wonder where the story is going, but the story is secondary in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There is just enough of a story to implement the character growth for McMurphy and the others, and that is what this story is really about.
Speaking of effective characters, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to Nurse Ratched, who might be one of the best villains/antagonists of all time. I’m actually not being hyperbolic in saying that, as AFI has named her the #5 villain of all time trailing only the Wicked Witch of the West, Darth Vader, Norman Bates, and Hannibal Lecter. That’s a pretty impressive list, and she deserves to be on it. She was played perfectly by Louise Fletcher, who would win the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her efforts. Fletcher played Nurse Ratched with a sinisterly subdued manner that at first belied just how wicked she really was. She never does anything overtly evil, but she has malice towards all. Nurse Ratched is the commander of the ward, and she does her best to dehumanize its tenants so that they will always be submissive to her. It has always worked until McMurphy arrives. What’s interesting is that there is a point in the film where she has the opportunity to send him back to the work farm, but instead wants him to stay at the institution. She wants to break McMurphy. She wants to show all of the inmates that she’s in command and what better way to do it than by breaking the one that would set them free of her. What’s great about the screenwriting in that scene is that she never comes out and says it. It’s all in the subtext of the dialogue as well as in Fletcher’s outstanding performance. That’s where you really see that subtleness in Fletcher’s acting. Nurse Ratched’s exterior is one of calm and kindness. However, on the inside she is sinister and devious and manipulative. It truly is an outstanding performance that has to be seen in order to be fully appreciated.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention again the amazing performance that Jack Nicholson gave as Randle Patrick McMurphy. This was one of Jack’s signature roles, along with Jake Gittes in Chinatown and Jack Torrance in The Shining. In fact Jack Nicholson dominated the 70’s to the point where you can just say “Jack” and everyone knows who you’re talking about. He would win the Oscar for the first time for his performance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the film would help him become one of the all-time icons in the history of cinema. It almost seems as this was the role that Jack was born to play, and he played it with a style and panache that no one else could have delivered. As pointed out above, there are a lot of great things going on in this film, but it’s hard to imagine One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest winning Best Picture with anyone other than Jack Nicholson as its star.
I should get back to the thematic elements for just a moment. This is a film about “the system”. At this time in the mid 70’s, America was just getting out of Vietnam and the Watergate Scandal was coming to its depressing conclusion. The economy was recessing and we were also in an energy crisis. The systems of our society and our economy were breaking down all around us. It was a very tumultuous time that kind of gets overlooked since it was bookended by the counter culture revolution of the 60’s and the Reagan revolution of the 80’s. But in the 70’s there was a noticeable problem with our systems, with the way we were doing things. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shined a bright spotlight on that. Whether it was McMurphy trying to use loopholes in the system to make his time easier or whether it was Nurse Ratched showing that the systems that were set up to protect us were actually doing us more harm than good, this film exposed flaws in our society in a subtle and small way that made them palatable to the average film viewer. Those messages, though subtle, are what make this such a powerful film.
Did the Academy get it right?
Yes they did, but there was some stiff competition in 1975. Barry Lyndon, directed by Stanley Kubrick may be one of the most beautiful films ever shot. However the story is long and rambling. It’s a period piece and is the type of film that might have won had it come out in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, but was not the best film of 1975. I should also say that personally, Kubrick is my favorite director, but Barry Lyndon is my least favorite Kubrick film. Dog Day Afternoon was another film nominated for Best Picture in 1975 that might have won had it come out in a different year. It’s the film that showed that Al Pacino could be more than just Michael Corleone, and it is a dramatic, edge of your seat thrill ride, in which all of the characters are brought to the edge and cannot turn back. Perhaps the film with the most staying power that was nominated in 1975 was Jaws. Yes, Jaws was nominated for sheer entertainment value. Jaws really changed cinema in that it was an event movie and probably the very first summer blockbuster. It would end the year as the all-time box office leader and started the tradition of summer blockbusters that continues to this day. It also launched the career of director Steven Spielberg, who as we know would go on to be one of the most important filmmakers in the history of the medium. The final film nominated was Nashville, directed Robert Altman. What makes Nashville an important film is that it showed that musicals could be still viable, although they had to be rethought in order for that to happen. Nashville was an example of this type of rethought musical where concert music replaced characters breaking into song and dance. Nashville was the precursor to films like The Blues Brothers, Almost Famous and Chicago. Overall those were some very fine films nominated in 1975, and they all had attributes that made them worthy of being named Best Picture. However the right film won. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is the total package of a well-crafted film with top shelf performances by the actors. It was ranked #20 on the original AFI list of the top 100 films of all time, and it was the Best Picture of 1975.