Our Sponsors

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)


One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Formanand based on the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. There had also been a stage version entitled One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest of the book in 1963, but the film derives directly from the novel.
The film was the second to win all five major Academy Awards, (Best PictureActor in Lead RoleActress in Lead RoleDirector, and Screenplay) following It Happened One Night in 1934, an accomplishment not repeated until 1991 by The Silence of the Lambs.
The movie was filmed at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon, which was the setting of the novel.
The film is #20 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies list.

Plot

In 1963 Oregon, Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a recidivist criminal serving a short sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape, is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. He hopes to avoid hard labor and serve the rest of his sentence in a more relaxed environment. Although he is anti-authoritarian with a history of violence, McMurphy exhibits no overt signs ofmental illness.
McMurphy's ward is run by steely, unyielding Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who employs subtle humiliation, unpleasant medical treatments and a mind-numbing daily routine to suppress the patients. McMurphy finds that they are more fearful of Ratched than they are focused on becoming functional in the outside world. McMurphy establishes himself immediately as the leader; his fellow patients include Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), a nervous, stuttering young man; Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick), a man disposed to childish fits of temper; Martini (Danny DeVito), who is delusional; Dale Harding (William Redfield), a high-strung, well-educated paranoid; and "Chief" Bromden (Will Sampson), a silent six-foot-sevenNative American believed to be deaf and mute.
McMurphy's and Nurse Ratched's battle of wills escalates rapidly. When McMurphy's card games win away everyone's cigarettes, Ratched confiscates the cigarettes and rations them out. McMurphy calls for votes on ward policy changes to challenge her, and organizes a pickup game of basketball against the orderlies. He makes a show of betting the other patients he can escape by lifting an old hydrotherapy console—a massive marble plumbing fixture—off the floor and sending it through the window; when he fails to do so, he turns to them and says, "At least I tried."
McMurphy steals a hospital bus, herds his colleagues aboard, stops to pick up Candy (Marya Small), a party girl, and takes the group deep sea fishing on a comandeered boat. He tells them: "You're not nuts, you're fisherman!" and they begin to feel faint stirrings of self-determination. Soon after, however, McMurphy learns that Ratched and the doctors have the power to keep him committed indefinitely. Sensing a rising tide of insurrection among the group, Ratched tightens her grip on everyone.
During one of Ratched's group humiliation sessions, Cheswick's agitation boils over and he, McMurphy and the Chief wind up brawling with the orderlies. They are sent up to the "shock shop" for electroconvulsive therapy. While McMurphy and the Chief wait their turn, McMurphy offers Chief a piece of gum, and Chief murmurs "Thank you". McMurphy is delighted to find Bromden is neither deaf nor mute, and stays silent to deflect attention. After the electroshock therapy, McMurphy shuffles back onto the ward feigning catatonia, before humorously animating his face and loudly greeting his fellow patients, assuring everyone that the ECT only charged him up all the more and that the next woman to take him on will "light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars."
But the struggle with Ratched is taking its toll, and with his release date no longer a certainty, McMurphy plans an escape. He phones Candy to bring her friend Rose (Louisa Moritz) and some booze to the hospital late one night. They enter through a window after McMurphy bribes the night orderly, Mr. Turkle (Scatman Crothers). McMurphy and Candy invite the patients into the day room for a party; the group breaks into the drug locker, puts on music, and enjoys a bacchanalian rampage. At the end of the night, McMurphy and Bromden prepare to climb out the window with the girls. McMurphy says goodbye to everyone, and invites an emotional Billy to escape with them; he declines, saying he is not yet ready to leave the hospital—though he would like to date Candy in the future. McMurphy insists Billy have sex with Candy right then and there, and Billy (and Candy) agree. They retire to a private room. The effects of the alcohol and pilfered medication take their toll on everyone, including McMurphy and the Chief, whose eyes slowly close in fatigue.
Nurse Ratched arrives the next morning and discovers the scene: the ward completely upended and patients passed out all over the floor. She orders the attendants to lock the window, clean up, and conduct a head count. When they find Billy and Candy, the other patients applaud and, buoyed, Billy speaks for the first time without a stutter. Nurse Ratched then announces that she will tell Billy's mother what he has done. Billy panics, his stutter returns, and he starts punching himself in the groin; locked in the doctor's office, he kills himself. McMurphy, enraged at Nurse Ratched, chokes her nearly to death until orderly Washington knocks him out.
Some time later, the patients in the ward play cards and gamble for cigarettes as before, only now with Harding dealing and delivering a pale imitation of McMurphy's patter. Nurse Ratched, still recovering from the neck injury sustained during McMurphy's attack, wears a neck brace and speaks in a thin, reedy voice. The patients pass a whispered rumor that McMurphy dramatically escaped the hospital rather than being taken "upstairs".
Late that night, Chief Bromden sees McMurphy being escorted back to his bed, and initially believes that he has returned so they can escape together— which he is now ready to do since McMurphy has made him feel "as big as a mountain". However, when he looks closely at McMurphy's unresponsive face, he is horrified to see lobotomy scars on his forehead. Unwilling to allow McMurphy to live in such a state—or be seen this way by the other patients—the Chief smothers McMurphy with his pillow. He then carries out McMurphy's escape plan by lifting the hydrotherapy console off the floor and hurling the massive fixture through a grated window, climbing through and running off into the distance.

[edit]Cast

According to Forman on the latest Special Edition DVD, he wanted Burt Reynolds to play the lead.
The role of domineering Nurse Ratched was turned down by Anne BancroftColleen DewhurstGeraldine PageEllen BurstynJane Fonda,Shirley MacLaine and Angela Lansbury, until Louise Fletcher accepted casting only a week before filming began.
The film marked the credited film debuts of Sampson, Dourif and Lloyd. It was also one of DeVito's earliest films. DeVito and Lloyd co-starred several years later on the television series, Taxi.

[edit]Title

The title is derived from an American children's folk rhyme.[2] In a detail not included in the film, the novel shows it to be a rhyme that Chief Bromden remembers from his childhood.
Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

[edit]Reception

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert (who won a Pulitzer Prize later that year) claimed that "Miloš Forman's 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' is a film so good in so many of its parts that there's a temptation to forgive it when it goes wrong. But it does go wrong, insisting on making larger points than its story really should carry, so that at the end, the human qualities of the characters get lost in the significance of it all. And yet there are those moments of brilliance".[3] Ebert would later put the film on his "Great Movies" list.[4] A.D. Murphy of Variety wrote a mixed review as well,[5] as did Vincent Canby: writing in The New York Times, Canby called the film "a comedy that can't quite support its tragic conclusion, which is too schematic to be honestly moving, but it is acted with such a sense of life that one responds to its demonstration of humanity if not to its programmed metaphors."[6]
The film went on to win a total of five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Jack Nicholson (who played McMurphy), Best Actress forLouise Fletcher (who played Nurse Ratched), Best Direction for Miloš FormanBest Picture, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman. The film currently has a 96% "Certified Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[7]
The film is considered to be one of the greatest American films. Ken Kesey participated in the early stages of script development, but withdrew after creative differences with the producers over casting and narrative point-of-view; ultimately he filed suit against the production and won a settlement.[8] Kesey himself claimed never to have seen the movie, but said he disliked what he knew of it,[9] a fact confirmed byChuck Palahniuk who wrote, "The first time I heard this story, it was through the movie starring Jack Nicholson. A movie that Kesey once told me he disliked".[10]
In 1993, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry.
The film was shown in Swedish cinemas between 1975 and 1987 — twelve years, which is still a record. When Miloš Forman learned that, he said, "I'm absolutely thrilled by that... It's wonderful."[citation needed]

[edit]Awards and honors

[edit]Academy Awards

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest won all of the "Big Five" Academy Awards at the 48th Oscar ceremony
It was nominated for an additional four

[edit]Golden Globes

The film won all nominated six awards:

[edit]BAFTA Awards

The film won 6 BAFTAs
It was nominated for

[edit]Others




0 comments:

Post a Comment

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More

 
Design by Free WordPress Themes | Bloggerized by Lasantha - Premium Blogger Themes | ewa network review