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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Chief Bromden, a gigantic Euro-Indigenous American patient at a psychiatric hospital, who presents himself as deaf, mute, and docile. Bromden's tale focuses mainly on the antics of tale focuses mainly on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, a petty criminal who, fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.
1975 · Directed by Miloš Forman · 135 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 23 frames
Tagline
In this clean, orderly, disciplined world, who needs guys like McMurphy? Everybody.
Plot
In 1963, Oregon, Randle McMurphy is incarcerated for the statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl (which he claims he committed under the assumption that she was an 18-year-old), with five previous arrests for assault. He feigns mental illness so he can be moved to a mental institution and avoid hard labor at a work farm. The medical ward is dominated by the cold, passive-aggressive Nurse Ratched, who intimidates her patients and maintains control through fear.
The other patients include young, anxious, stuttering Billy Bibbit; Charlie Cheswick, who is prone to temper tantrums; delusional, child-like Martini; the articulate and repressed Dale Harding; belligerent and profane Max Taber; epileptics Jim Sefelt and Bruce Fredrickson; quiet but violent-minded Scanlon; tall, deaf-mute Native American Chief Bromden; and several others with chronic conditions.
Ratched sees McMurphy's lively, rebellious presence as a threat to her authority, to which she responds by confiscating and rationing the patients' cigarettes and suspending their card-playing privileges. McMurphy finds himself in a battle of wills against Ratched. One night, he makes a bet with the other inmates that he can escape by tearing a hydrotherapy fountain off its base and hurling it through a locked window, but is predictably unable to lift it. Shortly after, he hijacks a charter bus, picks up his girlfriend Candy, and escapes with several patients to steal a recreational fishing boat, exposing them to the outside world and encouraging them to discover their abilities and find self-confidence.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman
- Cinematography: Haskell Wexler
- Edited by: Lynzee Klingman, Sheldon Kahn
- Music: Jack Nitzsche
- Production design: Paul Sylbert
- Produced by: Michael Douglas, Saul Zaentz
Cast
- Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy
- Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit
- Louise Fletcher as Nurse Mildred Ratched
- Danny DeVito as Martini
- William Redfield as Dale Harding
- Scatman Crothers as Orderly Turkle
- Christopher Lloyd as Max Taber
- Will Sampson as Chief Bromden
- Dean R. Brooks as Dr. John Spivey
- Michael Berryman as Ellis
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Fantasy Films
- Budget: $3,000,000
- Box office: $108,981,275
- Themes: mentally disabled, friendship, based on novel or book, nurse, lunatic asylum, affectation, insane asylum, oregon, usa, hospital, medication
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