One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) is one of the greatest American films of all time - a $4.4 million dollar effort directed by Czech Milos Forman.

It surprised everyone by becoming enormously profitable - the seventh-highest-earning film ever (at its time), bringing in almost $300 million worldwide. The independently-produced film also did well at the  Oscar ceremony: it was the first film to take all the major awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress) since Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934). It was nominated for nine Academy Awards in total: Best Actor (Jack Nicholson with his first win after losing the previous year for Chinatown (1974)), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Bill Butler and Haskell Wexler), Best Director, Best Editing, Best Picture, Best Score (Jack Nitzsche) and Best Supporting Actor (Brad Dourif). "Cuckoo's Nest" beat out tough competition for Best Picture by Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and Altman's Nashville (1975).

 

The characters include:

 

• Randal McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), self-confident and clever, sent to the mental hospital from prison.
• Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), the domineering, cold chief nurse on the ward where McMurphy stays.
• Nurse Pilbow, the assistant nurse who seems frightened of the patients.
• Washington, black male nurse who doesn't like McMurphy.
• Dr. Spivey (real hospital superintendent Dr. Dean Brooks), the head doctor at the institution,
• "Chief" Bromden, a silent, huge Indian giant who pretends to be deaf and dumb.
• Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), a pathetic, stuttering, boy who is afraid of his mother
• Dale Harding, an ineffectual intellectual - relatively sane but paranoid about his wife.
• Charlie Cheswick, an insecure neurotic without self-confidence
• Martini (Danny De Vito in one of his earliest roles), short, smiling with an immature personality
• Taber (Christopher Lloyd in his film debut), a cynical and trouble-making
• Turkle, works in the hospital at night and likes drinking and women.

 

Write your own summary of the film (not more than 200 words) using the ideas below:

 

playing cards                                                   fight

play basketball                                    not deaf or dumb

group therapy                                                  electro-shock treatment

vote                                                                party

World Series baseball match                           Billy Bibbet spends the night with McMurphy's girlfriend

escape by climbing the fence                            suicide

fishing                                                             strangle

basketball match against the nurses                  lobotomy

voluntary patients                                            suffocate sb

wanted his cigarettes                                       lifts water station and escapes

 

 

You can find a complete summary of the film at the following web site:

 

 

http://www.filmsite.org/onef.html )

 

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