ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST @ 50

R.P. McMurphy engineers himself out of a prison stay for what he thinks is an easier way of doing his time, in psychiatric custody. He spends the first few days sussing out the navigation but comes up against Nurse Ratched who leads the troubled therapy circles. A little testing and error later he pits himself against the nurse to the point where things just have to bend or break. Who's going to win?

Milos Forman's first Anglophone and Hollywood feature after his defection from then Czechoslovakia (how's that for exposition stuffing) is an adaptation of a popular novel of the same title by Ken Kesey. The 1962 book of authority and dissent, of institutionalism and individuality appealed to a generation waking to the controls and state paranoia of their parents' generation. Kesey avoids overcooking his characters' fealty to these sides to provide a more difficult story for deeper reading. Between the book and the film, Cuckoo's Nest also succeeded as a play. This took Broadway with its star powered Kirk Douglas as McMurphy and visionary casting of the young Gene Wilder as chronically twisted Billy Bibbit.

Forman's adaptation of the book and play was the end of a decades long attempt by rights owner Kirk Douglas to bring it to the screen. This is a good story and worth your time. It involves Douglas' son Michael taking the production reins and Forman's defection to get a movie made (not that simple but you get the idea). The thing that Forman brought to the table was his life experience of Soviet oppression that allowed him to not just pit but understand the authority of Nurse Ratched. That made the difference. Even the once touted Hal Ashby as a director could not provide such comprehension.

With this, we don't just get the breakthrough of Jack Nicholson as JACK but a counterpart that is not only solid but rounded and more difficult to battle. This won Louise Fletcher her Oscar and the film its reputation. Without it, the film would have collapsed into the kind of schmalz of Dead Poet's Society in the next decade (which thinly veiled populist authoritarianism). The daily constraint in the beige world of the hospital, the paternalism of its bosses and the intimidating gentleness of Nurse Ratched create a quietly terrifying world that, with a very few tweaks, had been Forman's. I know that most commentary about this film centres on the performances and their impressive dynamics from warmth to violence but my most recent viewing brought out so clearly what Forman added.

One such is the meticulous feed of the score. The diegetic Mantovani strings music intended to calm the patients (but really to mask their sound) rolls out like the whitewash of the walls. Glass panels might add sunlight to the ward but they also promote observation. And then when rebellion and violence break the score tap gets suddenly shut off and we mostly hear a documentary cacophony. It's unsettling. 

Oh, of course I have to talk about the central opposing performances. 

Jack Nicholson had already found the screen persona that he moved into permanently. There are hints in his Roger Corman roles but Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces in 1970 saw the finishing touches applied to the agent of danger he became. Cuckoo's Nest was where that emerged for the biggest audience he ever had. To criticise him for adopting a single career-long performance is to criticise Christopher Walken or Laura Dern. When Nicholson works as JACK it's because he's in a role that exploits that (as opposed to an absorber like De Niro). The difference here is that the Jack role is given more than its usual two dimensions. It's not the constant crazy on 11 that we get in The Shining (which works there, to be honest) but a constant, restless self-restraint that is sure to disintegrate into explosion. It works as a complex role because we know (even if retrospectively) that he's making JACK! Jack.

In the blue corner, Louise Fletcher is what Americans call a character actor and what all other cultures call a good actor. She gives Nurse Ratched the deceptively pleasant control mania that serves middle managers the world over, a kind of fragile benignity that masks incurable contempt. Fletcher said that she based her performance on the way white matriachs treated black people in her native Alabama. There is an extra chill that comes from this knowledge but it's gravy when you see it play out in this film. She pegs MacMurphy as a disruptor and, as scenes progress, she learns to play the others against him, recognising that his success is entirely dependent on their approval. By the time chaos pushes this strategem off the screen she is left unmasked and cruel, her drive to control in command despite herself. It is a performance which you temporarily bypass your apathy to industry awards and start cheering with the rest. It wasn't just an Oscar; she got a BAFTA and a Golden Globe to boot. (I had the same reaction to F. Murray Abraham's big win for Forman's Amadeus a decade later). 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a cuckoo's egg of a film, one that, amidst a decade of disruption during the New Hollywood of Scorsese and Coppola etc., it quietly reset a Young Turk bravado through values like dignity and individuality. These qualities frame Forman's big canvas The Fireman's Ball but even there he exercised restraint this time, knowing it was more important than making a loud entrance. It did more than just forge a good movie, it made his career.

Viewing notes: For this watch I gladly put my recently bought Warner's steelbook of the film and watched it is splendid 4K. Don't want to pay that much? It's streaming for rent on four services. You need this one among your notches.