One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was met with widespread critical and commercial success on its release in 1975. The third highest grossing film of the year, it won five major Academy Awards including best director and best actor. Jaimey Fisher's study deconstructs how One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was simultaneously typical and extraordinary for its New Hollywood era. Analyzing the film's controversial adaptation from Ken Kesey's best-selling 1962 novel, he contextualizes it in relation to the relatively uncomplicated adaptations of A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Godfather (1972) and The Exorcist (1973). Through a close reading of key scenes depicting electroconvulsive ("shock") therapy and lobotomies, Fisher analyzes the film's critique of the American mental health infrastructure and its influence in instigating a broader rethinking of trauma, mental illness and institutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s within the context of the anti-psychiatry movement. He goes on to examine the racial implications of re-centering the film's narrative around Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), and what this meant for the character of Indigenous patient "Chief" Bromden (Will Sampson Jr.). While the latter was the primary person and perspective through which the novel was narrated, his role was significantly diminished within the film. Finally, outlining the film's high-profile afterlife, Fisher underscores its unique position in US cinema and cultural history.