One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1976) – Chiswick Cinema Film Club – Review by Andrea Carnevali

Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy

Chiswick Cineama Film Club is on June 17. Get your ticket now: chiswickcinema.co.uk/movie/one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-50th-anniversary

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

★★★★★

A true cinematic masterpiece that has lost none of its power to devastate and enlighten, fifty years on.

What remains most surprising on every rewatch, even for those like me who have seen it dozens of times, is just how funny the film actually is, for at least its first two acts. Milos Forman relies on a unique blend of realism and humour to portray the ordinary humanity and quirky dignity of these ‘damaged souls’, allowing us to shiver with them even as we laugh.

That tonal balance is one of the film’s great miracles. But of course, the comedy only makes the final act hit all the harder.

This is one of those rare films that works at once as a character drama, a political allegory, a tragic comedy, and a rebellion story.

We shouldn’t forget that it was released at the right cultural moment, when New Hollywood was becoming more rebellious and more suspicious of institutions in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate.

In that context, the Oregon State Hospital is not just a medical facility, but a brutal metaphor for any repressive system that demands obedience and crushes individuality.

The soul of the film lies in its extraordinary ensemble cast, led, of course, by Jack Nicholson, who gives a career-defining performance as McMurphy, a role he seemed born to play.

He is surrounded by a group of then-unknown actors who give the ward its life and texture.

Danny DeVito’s Martini, Christopher Lloyd’s Taber, and Brad Dourif’s Billy Bibbit are all beautifully realised, each one fully human rather than merely eccentric.

The film never treats them as caricatures; instead, it finds the ‘loving madness’ in each of them. Director Milos Forman isn’t laughing at them, he is laughing with them. All of which makes the film even more moving.

Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched

And then we have one of cinema’s great villains, Nurse Ratched, played with chilling precision by Louise Fletcher. She is an instrument of institutional cruelty hiding behind a calm, frozen face and the language of care.

The anger she provokes is visceral, especially in the unforgettable baseball sequence, where the denial of the game becomes a small but devastating act of power.

And the cut from that crushed disappointment to McMurphy’s fake radio commentary remains one of the great comic victories in cinema, when imagination, mischief, and defiance triumph over control… even if briefly.

Forman’s direction is a masterclass in restraint and observation. His naturalistic, cinéma vérité style is particularly fascinating, especially given that the novel is written entirely in first person by ‘Chief’, which gives the film a much more immediate and real feeling.

Part of that authenticity also comes from Forman’s decision to film in a real psychiatric hospital (many of the extras are real patients), which creates an atmosphere that never feels staged.

His use of extreme close-ups, often cropping out hair or necks, forces us to focus on tiny shifts in expression and micro-movements that reveal everything.

A profoundly humane approach which makes the men feel alive, while also emphasising the cold, immovable stillness of Ratched’s face.

And then there is that ending. As gut-wrenching and powerful today as it was in 1975, it remains one of the harshest and yet greatest cathartic finales in cinema history, with that final image that seems to scream: the system may have broken the man, but it could not contain the human spirit.

This is, quite simply, a masterpiece, and whether you have seen it before or not, I urge you to come along.

Andrea Carnevali is a Bafta winning film maker who lives in Chiswick, and a co-creator of the Chiswick In Film festival.