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A movie like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest could’ve been a disaster. It spent years in development hell with Kirk Douglas originally wanting to play the main role before realizing he was too old. Other actors, such as Burt Reynolds, were considered before Jack Nicholson was hired. He, himself, had almost given up totally on acting to work behind the camera with the occasional on-screen cameo when needed as in Head.
It’s mostly set within the confines of a mental hospital, giving it more of a feeling of claustrophobia. The main character may be a perverted petty criminal, but he’s not near as bad as the villain, who is a major medical official. And she doesn’t do anything really violent physically. But her words and demeanor make her more unpleasant. Where do we draw the line between what is legal and illegal?
Nicholson in his Oscar-winning role plays Randle P. McMurphy. He’s been switched from an Oregon work farm to a mental hospital outside Portland because there’s speculation he may be mentally unstable. Or is he just faking which what some officials think. Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher in her Oscar-winning role) is a cold passive-aggressive woman who intimidates her patients, especially the young, gentle-natured Billy Bibbitt (Brad Dourif in his Oscar-nominated role) who has a stutter when he’s nervous or anxious which is most of the time.
McMurphy is put in a group session Ratched moderates but more to humiliate and embarrass the patients which include the child-like and delusional Martini (Danny DeVito), the belligerent Talbert (Christopher Lloyd), the quiet Scanlon (Delos V. Smith Jr.), epileptics Jim Sefelt (William Duell) and Bruce Frederickson (Vincent Schiavelli) who may be closer than just friends, and Charlie Chesswick (Sydney Lassick) who’s prone to tantrums and extreme anxiety. There’s also the refined Dale Harding (William Redfield) who is possibly sexually repressed because he’s a closeted gay man, who will become one of McMurphy’s biggest adversaries among the patients,
At first McMurphy is taken aback by all these people but feels that he can just run out the time until his sentence ends. And he immediately begins to act out because he feels he can get away with anything with the rest of the patients because “we’re nuts.” He’s incarcerated for the statutory rape of a 15-year-old and other incidents. But he soon learns it’s a different way in a mental ward than it is in a prison ward. He begins to antagonize Ratched by demanding they switch the normal routine to allow people on the ward to watch the World Series. He eventually steals the hospital’s bus and takes the patients out to the harbor where they steal a ship to go fishing. And McMurphy has sex with a lady friend.
But McMurphy learns that he may be screwed. His actions may cause him to stay in the mental hospital for much longer than his original prison sentence. However, to his surprise, he realizes many of the patients are there voluntary and can leave anytime. Even Billy is voluntary. At the same time, he gets closer to many of the patients, especially Billy and “Chief” Bromden (Will Sampson), an hulking Indigenous Native American who everyone things is deaf-mute. However, Chief is actually faking so he doesn’t have to interact with many people. Chief also tells McMurphy he grew up in a household where his father was an alcoholic and physically abusive.
Set in the early 1960s, the movie was released in 1975 right around the time people began to take mental health in America more seriously. This was just a few years after Geraldo Rivera had exposed the conditions at the Willowbrook Hospital. While Ratched isn’t violent, she leaves that to an attendant Washington (Nathan George) who along with other attendants, all black, treat the patients badly. You could argue that Milos Forman, the Czech-born filmmaker, is making a social commentary about the country as the movie was released during the middle of the Women’s Lib movement and only a decade after the Civil Rights vote. However, a lot of white Americans (men and women) were trying to hold on to the traditional conventions from the post-WWII era to Vietnam.
The other attendants played by Alonzo Brown and Mwako Cumbaka get very physical with all the patients. With the exception of “Chief,” they’re all white and I’m guessing mostly Christian Protestant or Catholic and Jewish. Just like Ratched, they’re able to bully and intimidate but their main use is the hospital’s muscle men whenever a patient gets out of hand or needs to be corrected when a simple command won’t suffice. The night guard, Turkle, is played by Scatman Crothers. Little is seen of him except that he seems to be more of a dirty older man who’s willing to bend the rules if he can’t get something out of it.
This is a social statement on how the doctors and physicians remain in their offices occasionally talking to the patients the least they can, but leaving the black men attendants and women nurses to do their dirty work. Dean Brooks, who plays Dr. John Spivey, was a real physician at the Oregon State Hospital where the movie was filmed. He is the only one who seems the most cordial to McMurphy but it’s mostly because he knows he can get more out of them if the others on the staff are more hostile and antagonistic. (Incidentally, Brooks became a much needed medical official as DeVito had alarmed the cast and crew as he began to communicate with an imaginary friend to get over being separated from Rhea Perlman as she was all the way on the other of the country. Brooks said it was okay as long as the imaginary person didn’t start talking back. Lassick, himself, got too emotional playing Chesswick they actually would worry he’d have a breakdown in real life.)
There’s a younger nurse, Pilbow (Mimi Sarkasian), who seems to function as Ratched’s servant assistant. Her youth and beauty seems to be the type of thing that arouses McMurphy a little. I’m just wondering why Billy isn’t attracted to her as he seems to be attracted to McMurphy’s girlfriend, Candy (Marya Small). It could be that the nurse’s uniform sends a sign of authority or Billy has seen a side of her not shown that reminds him of Ratched. Billy’s mother is supposed to be a friend of Ratched’s which gives the impression he has an overbearing mother and that has been extended to Ratched, which is why he keeps his distance from Pilbow. Candy is obviously more gullible than Pilbow.
He knows Candy is simple, young and attractive which he likes. Sadly, it leads to Billy’s downfall as he lets his sexual urges get the best of him. Dourif was only in his mid-20s at this time. And when I finally watched the movie from beginning to end for the first time in the mid-1990s, it didn’t immediately click who he was. I had known Dourif as the voice of Chucky from the Child’s Play movies or his roles in David Lynch’s movies. Yet seeing him here as a young man in his first film role holding his own against Nicholson and Fletcher as well as Redfield, an experienced actor of stage, TV and film, you feel almost sad he didn’t win an Oscar even though he was nominated. He did win a Golden Globe for Best New Star but seems to have been typecast as weirdos and villains.
In many ways, Billy is a more tragic figure than McMurphy. THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS!! After a wild night where McMurphy invites Candy and her friend, Rose (Louisa Mortiz), to sneak in for a late-night Christmas party, Billy and Candy have sex in one of the individual rooms. McMurphy is planning on escaping with Chief, as he is the only one who knows the man’s fakery. Yet they all get too drunk and have too much of a wild time, they all pass out. The next morning, the nurses and attendants find them.
When Ratched confronts Billy lying in bed with Candy, he finally stands up to her and doesn’t stutter saying he’s not embarrassed. Yet, Ratched tells him she’s going to call his mother and tell him what happened. Upset, Billy is taking to the Spivey’s office where he is left alone. He kills himself by using broken glass to slit his throat. This causes a lot of commotion with Ratched tries to quell by telling them they need to go about their daily activities. This causes an enraged McMurphy to attack her and strangle her. Moments earlier as he tried to make a quick break, Washington and the other attendants had gotten into a fight with Chief and it looks Washington was about to get very aggressive as he wraps a leather strap around his knuckles.
McMurphy is knocked out and Ratched is saved even though injured. However, her reputation is ruined and she doesn’t have the control over the ward as she thought. Billy had his whole life ahead of him and all he wanted was someone to not control him. He takes an immediate like to McMurphy who treats him better than the medical staff. If McMurphy did escape, he might have made it to Canada but he would’ve continued to get into trouble, possibly ending up back in prison in that country and in America. Billy’s fate is sadder because it’s about older generations refusing to allow youth to grow.
Forman doesn’t really hammer home social commentary harder like other directors, but it’s just as effective as it’s subtle. The People vs. Larry Flynt is about the hypocrisies of the rich going after easier targets like pornography while ignoring the charlatans of Rev. Jerry Falwell or Charles Keating who were money swindlers. Amadeus is about traditions that are unoriginal fighting against new ideas which can be radical and controversial but even more damaging, popular. Even in Man on the Moon, Andy Kaufman was about not following the “rules” that had worked for everyone else. Forman grew up behind the Iron Curtain of the Cold War and his movie The Firemen’s Ball was seen as a satiric criticism of Eastern European Communism and subsequently banned. So, the late filmmaker knew a lot about breaking down what people thought of as the status quo.
But what’s so funny is how Americus during the Cold War at its peak was really no different than what was happening in Eastern Europe. Psychiatry and mental health wasn’t taken as seriously. It’s easier for someone to assume McMurphy is faking it. As he tells Dr. Spivey, do they expect him to constantly masturbate and defecate on the floor? While we do see some patients who maybe fit that description, where do we draw the line between what’s normal and abnormal? During one of the few moments he speaks, Scanlon asks why the patients are locked out of the dormitory during the day as Ratched tells him they will go back to bed after taking their medications and meals. The hospital is under the impression that as long as you’re active, you’re not depressed or suffering from your own mental health issues.
Fletcher said she took the role of Ratched as someone who felt she was always doing the right thing for someone. And it’s this toxic positivity that makes her more evil. She pressures the patients to speak in the group sessions even when they don’t want to speak. And it’s obvious first to McMurphy that some are growing tired of Harding’s constant issues with his wife. However, Harding and the rest are all there voluntarily yet they are also trapped inside. Even Billy is voluntary, but it seems he’s probably there because his mother forced him to be there. On the outside, these men would be the “normal” people you might pass by on the street and not even think anything is wrong with them except frustration over a sports team that’s not doing well.
Yet society wants them locked away because men can’t show this weakness and vulnerability. Even Harding, who seems to be the most susceptible to follow what Spivey and Ratched want can’t help but enjoy a little of McMurphy’s rebellion. When they go out on the ship, he doesn’t once question why they’re stealing a vessel. He’s more upset over McMurphy telling the harbor master he’s the only one there who’s not a doctor. Later when the party is held, he enjoys it as well as the others. Along with the others, he even encourages Billy to have his intimacy with Candy. Harding is really only a show-off to those in authority. He’s the type of tattle-tell who would brown-nose school administrators but still joke around and kid with the other student while the teacher left the room or goof off in the locker room.
Nest would go on to make a clean sweep of the five major Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay). Dourif is wonderful but he was up against George Burns for The Sunshine Boys so it was some tough competition. However, this is a movie where every actor seems to be wonderfully cast. Redfield would be diagnosed with leukemia while filming this movie and would pass away in 1976 at the age of 49. Sampson was working the rodeo circuit when he was found by producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz as he was 6-foot-7. This is his first major acting role and it’s a shame he didn’t get nominated because there’s more to acting than speaking. Sampson is having to play a man who is pretending to be deaf-mute, which means he has to act like he’s acting.
Other actors like Lloyd, DeVito, Duell, Schiavelli (whose unique appearance was the result of Marfan Syndrome), Lassick and Smith, whose scruffy long beard makes him look more like a homeless ragamuffin, all seem to have their own personalities that rises them up above caricature. There’s even an early appearance by horror icon Michael Berryman as one of the patients. Almost 50 years later, this movie seems to hold up just as perfectly as it did when audiences first saw it.
As a footnote, Fletcher’s acceptance speech below is one of the best I’ve seen as she proves it was very well deserved. And if you don’t get at least a lump in your throat when she uses American Sign Language to thank her parents, then you’re probably as cold as Ratched is.
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