size:55" x 39 1/4"

fantasy films present

milos forman

louise fletcher/william redfield

ua179

music jack mitzsche

good condition and had been folded

italian movie poster

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is an American 1975 drama film directed by Miloš Forman. The film is an adaptation of the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. The movie was the first to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor in Lead Role, Actress in Lead Role, Director, Screenplay) since It Happened One Night in 1934, an accomplishment not repeated until 1991, by The Silence of the Lambs.

There had been an earlier stage version of the book, in 1963, but the film does not use the script of the stage version.

The movie was filmed at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon, which was the setting of the novel.

Plot Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a recidivist criminal serving a short prison term on a work farm for statutory rape, is transferred to a mental institution due to his apparently deranged behavior. This is possibly a deliberate gambit by McMurphy in the belief that he'll now be able to serve out the rest of his sentence in relative comfort and ease.

His ward in the mental institution is run by a calm but unyielding tyrant, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who has cowed the patients — most of whom are there by choice, categorized as "voluntary" patients — into dejected submission. While he initially has little respect for his fellow patients, McMurphy's antiauthoritarian nature is aroused. His needling of Nurse Ratched is initially just for kicks, but his sense of injustice at their treatment leads him into a battle for the hearts and minds of the patients. What he finds out only later is that Ratched has the power to keep him there indefinitely. Rather than simply bide her time with McMurphy and have him transferred, Ratched sees his behavior as a personal affront and challenge to her authority and becomes obsessed with winning this contest.

McMurphy gradually forms deep friendships in the ward with a group of men which includes Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), a suicidal, stuttering and helpless young man whom Ratched has humiliated and dominated, and "Chief" Bromden (Will Sampson), a 6’ 7” (2 m) muscular Native American. Believed by the patients to be deaf and mute, Chief is mostly ignored but also respected for his enormous size. In Billy, McMurphy sees a younger brother figure whom he wants to teach to have fun, while the Chief ultimately becomes his only real confidant, as they both see their struggles against authority in similar terms.

McMurphy initially insults Chief when he enters the ward, but attempts to use his size as an advantage (for example, in playing basketball). Later, they and patient Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) are detained for being involved in a fight with the ward attendants. Cheswick undergoes electroshock therapy, while McMurphy and Chief wait their turn on a bench. While they wait, McMurphy offers Chief a piece of Juicy Fruit gum, and Bromden verbally thanks him. A surprised McMurphy discovers that Chief actually hates the hospital establishment just as he does but handles it in a different way (by remaining mute instead of using Randle's strategy of open defiance). McMurphy hatches a plan that will allow himself and Bromden to escape. Following his "therapy," McMurphy jokingly feigns catatonia before assuring his cohorts and Nurse Ratched that the attempt to subdue him didn't work.

McMurphy sneaks into the nurse's station and calls his girlfriend, Candy, and tells her to bring booze. Another woman tags along and both enter the ward after McMurphy bribes the night watchman, Mr. Turkle (Scatman Crothers). The patients drink while Billy flirts with McMurphy's girlfriend. McMurphy sees that Billy likes Candy and asks her to sleep with Billy. While Billy and Candy are in a separate room, the rest of the patients, including McMurphy and the Chief who had been planning to escape, pass out from drinking, probably because of the extant neuroleptic drugs (Thorazine, etc.) in their systems.

When Nurse Ratched arrives the next morning she commands the attendants to clean up the patients and conduct a head count. Billy is found in a room sleeping with Candy. Without stuttering at all, he announces that he is not ashamed of what he has done. Nurse Ratched then threatens that she will tell his mother about it. Billy breaks down, his stutter returns, and after being carried into the doctor's office, kills himself by slitting his throat. McMurphy, furious at what Nurse Ratched did to Billy, tries to strangle her. McMurphy is violently subdued and taken away again.

A few days later, the patients are seen playing cards as usual. Nurse Ratched, her vocal cords damaged by McMurphy's previous attack, is forced to speak through a microphone for the patients to hear her, and finds that she is now no longer able to intimidate them. Later that night, Chief Bromden sees McMurphy being returned to his bed. When the Chief approaches him, he finds to his horror that he has been given a lobotomy. Unwilling to leave McMurphy behind, the Chief suffocates his neurologically disabled friend with a pillow at night. He follows McMurphy's plan for escape by heroically hoisting a heavy hydrotherapy control panel (which McMurphy failed to lift earlier) and hurling it through a barred window. He is last seen fleeing the institution to the roaring cheers from Taber.

Casting Kirk Douglas originated the role of McMurphy in a stage production, and then bought the film rights, hoping to play McMurphy on the screen. He passed the production rights to his son, Michael Douglas, who decided his father was too old for the role. Kirk was reportedly angry at his son for a time afterwards because of this. Actor James Caan was originally offered the McMurphy role, and Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman were considered as well. According to the director on the latest Special Edition DVD, he wanted Burt Reynolds to play the lead.

The role of domineering Nurse Ratched was turned down by six actresses, Anne Bancroft, Colleen Dewhurst, Geraldine Page, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, and Angela Lansbury, until Louise Fletcher accepted casting only a week before filming began.