A nice rest in a state mental hospital beats a stretch in the pen, right? Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a free-spirited con with lightning in his veins and glib on his tongue, fakes insanity and moves in with what he calls the "nuts." Immediately, his contagious sense of disorder runs up against numbing routine. No way should guys pickled on sedatives shuffle around in bathrobes when the World Series is on. This means war! On one side is McMurphy. On the other is soft-spoken Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), among the most coldly monstrous villains in film history. At stake is the fate of every patient on the ward. Based on Ken Kesey's acclaimed bestseller, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest swept all five major 1975 Academy Awards: Best Picture (produced by Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas), Actor (Nicholson), Actress (Fletcher), Director (Milos Forman) and Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman). Raucous, searing and with a superb cast that includes Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd in his film debut, this one soars.
One of the key movies of the 1970s, when exciting, groundbreaking, personal films were still being made in Hollywood, Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest emphasized the humanistic story at the heart of Ken Kesey's more hallucinogenic novel. Jack Nicholson was born to play the part of Randle Patrick McMurphy, the rebellious inmate of a psychiatric hospital who fights back against the authorities' cold attitudes of institutional superiority, as personified by Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). It's the classic antiestablishment tale of one man asserting his individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist system--and it works on every level. Forman populates his film with memorably eccentric faces, and gets such freshly detailed and spontaneous work from his ensemble that the picture sometimes feels like a documentary. Unlike a lot of films pitched at the "youth culture" of the 1970s, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest really hasn't dated a bit, because the qualities of human nature that Forman captures--playfulness, courage, inspiration, pride, stubbornness--are universal and timeless. The film swept the Academy Awards for 1976, winning in all the major categories (picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay) for the first time since Frank Capra's It Happened One Night in 1931. --Jim Emerson
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Movie: 4.5/5 Picture Quality: 2.75~4/5 Sound Quality: 1.5/5 Extras: 2.5/5 Title: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Version: U.S.A / VC-1 BD-25 / Region Free
Running time: 2:13:42
Movie size: 17,720,721,408 bytes
Disc size: 21,099,357,516 bytes
Average video bit rate: 14.25 Mbps Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 640kbps
Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 1.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps
Dolby Digital Audio French 192 kbps 1.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps
Dolby Digital Audio German 192 kbps 1.0 / 48kHz / 192kbps
Dolby Digital... more info
How Times Change While I commend the excellent acting of the main characters, I found the film to be boring. After an hour of Nicholson's antics and conflict with the hospital--enough already! The believability is poor. No wonder the novel's author sued. When the Chief is carrying the cabinet, he can barely walk and breathe. But the next shot shows it flying out the heavy-metal screened window like it was launched from a catapult. That action clearly made enough noise to awaken most of the hospital, yet we see many of the... more info
One of the best acted movies ever! The story is not just great--the acting is what really makes it. The acting is supreb, and I'm not just talking about Nicholson! I LOVE the scene where Sydney Lassick (Charley Cheswick) throws a temper tantrum wanting his cigarettes. It is so convincingly real! It was not under or over acted. He hit the nail on the head with that scene. And it is also one of the funniest--especially when the orderlies think Taber is freaking out when he is actually getting burned with a cigarette). Just excellent!
"She Likes A Rigged Game." At one point in this movie that is one of the great classics of American films, McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) says of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) that "she likes a rigged game." And does she ever. She will keep order and conformity at all costs and has to be one of the most despised characters in filmdom. Watching the sparks fly between her and Nicholson as the inmate who fakes mental illness to get sent from prison to a psychiatric hospital is a joy to behold. Both Fletcher and Nicholson, who has never... more info
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