US (1975): Drama/Comedy
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. The cast also features William Redfield, Michael Berryman, Peter Brocco, Alonzo Brown, Scatman Crothers, Danny DeVito, William Duell, Josip Elic, Ken Kenny, Sydney Lassic, Christopher Lloyd (in his film debut) and Will Sampson (as Chief Bromden).
Unlike a lot of films pitched at the "youth culture" of the 1970s, this picture 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 1934. (Jim Emerson, Amazon.com)
...Cuckoo's Nest ranked #20 on the AFI list of "100 Years... 100 Movies", just behind another Nicholson favorite, Chinatown (1974), and just in front of John Ford's 1940 classic, The Grapes of Wrath.
9 nominations, 5 Awards
· Best Picture 1975: Saul Zaentz & Michael Douglas - Producers (Fantasy Films, UA)
· Actor 1975: Jack Nicholson
· Actress 1975: Louise Fletcher
· Directing 1975: Milos Forman
· Writing (Best Screenplay adapted from other material) 1975: Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman
· Supporting Actor 1975: Brad Dourif
· Cinematography 1975: Haskell Wexler, Bill Butler
· Film Editing 1975: Richard Chew, Lynzee Klingman, Sheldon Kahn
· Music Scoring Awards (Best Original Score) 1975: Jack Nitzsche