The film, adapted from Ken Kesey's novel but arguably demonstrating greater fidelity to the stage play that sprung from it, stars Nicholson as Randall "R.P." McMurphy, a convicted statutory rapist transferred from a work farm to a mental hospital when he displays troubling signs of apathy. He thinks he's landed on easy street: he'll serve the remainder of his sentence without having to be rehabilitated through prison chores. What he doesn't know is that getting committed means he's in "the cuckoo's nest" until deemed sane by an advisory board. McMurphy shouldn't, therefore, rile Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), the ward's maternal figure, a woman who operates on a punishment-reward system and does whatever else she can to retard the independence of her patients. She's the personification of institutionalization.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the ideal precursor to--and a mirror image of--Forman's follow-up, the film version of the 'Nam-era musical Hair, in which a band of hippies indoctrinates a hayseed army recruit into the counterculture. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, one man attempts to reform the dozen or so (self-committed, for the most part) lunatics kept under Ratched's thumb. But reforming--saving--them from what, exactly? Writing off One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, especially, as an anti-authority lament would discount the several rational arguments that passive-aggressive Ratched puts forth to McMurphy over the course of the picture. Both Hair and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are about people being rescued first and foremost from themselves.

The film's pivotal moment comes just after inmates too chicken to raise a hand in front of Nurse Ratched shoot down McMurphy's proposal to watch the World Series. (A Native American patient (the magnificent Will Sampson) tall enough to reach the basketball nets on the hospital's court later sums up the incident for McMurphy with ironic humility: "You're a lot bigger than I am.") Sullen, he tells them he's going to pick up a giant, marble water-fountain and hurl it through one of the gated windows, leap to the ground, and head for the hills--any old dive showing the game is his destination. Bets are placed against him that he's capable of hoisting such a hefty object, and McMurphy fails accordingly.

As he's leaving, though, he makes what sounds like a victory speech: "But I tried, didn't I goddamnit? At least I did that." This is a film preaching not success, but endeavour, hence a viciously bittersweet conclusion that happens to drive this viewer to uncontrollable tears each and every time he sees it. Unapologetically manipulative (if unsentimental), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was often shot with two cameras simultaneously in order to capture the spontaneous reactions of its gifted cast, including then-unknowns Danny De Vito, Christopher Lloyd, and Sydney Lassick (as the heartbreakingly immature Cheswick); the picture maintains a loose quality without, somewhat miraculously, the attendant technical sloppiness of Robert Altman's similar methods of alchemy. Populist in the best sense of the term, it's perhaps the decade's quintessential transitional film, exhibiting the virtues of the unconvention which preceded it and the Oscar-bait which undoubtedly exists in its wake.

1.85:1 DVD capture: Nicholson in Cuckoo's Nest

Released on LaserDisc a few years back in a coffee-table collectible from Pioneer Special Editions, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is now available in a "Two-Disc Special Edition" DVD from Warner Home Video that represents a bit of a trade-off from that earlier deluxe issue. On the one hand, Warner's cloudless 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, struck from restored elements, is a significant, welcome upgrade to the muted, scratchy presentation offered first by Pioneer, then by Warner itself on a 1997 DVD; on the other hand, Pioneer's release was a packaging feat, binding a copy of the screenplay between hard-shell covers that stored the LaserDisc platters, and it contained a longer version of the Charles Kiselyak documentary found on the new Warner DVD. (There it was called Completely Cuckoo; here it's "The Making of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'".) Warner's decision to exclude One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's original mono audio could prove another source of controversy--all you'll hear on this DVD is a 5.1 remix that, to be fair, has monaural tendencies, relying heavily on the centre channel. Only the fishing trip sequence opens up the soundstage.

Serving as an abridgement of the half-dull screen-specific commentary from Forman and producers Saul Zaentz and Michael Douglas on Disc 1, Disc 2's "The Making of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'" (47 mins.) features fairly recent interviews with Forman, Zaentz, Douglas, most of the actors save Nicholson (who's spoken of so often that you almost won't notice), various technical supervisors, and co-screenwriter Bo Goldman, who contributes a moving coda to the piece. Forman starts off by telling us that for him, the institution depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is like the politically repressed Czechoslovakia of his youth in microcosm. Unlocking the film in other ways are anecdotes from Vincent Schiavelli ("Frederickson") regarding characterization, such as the day production designers laid out random personal belongings and asked the then-rehearsing actors to select "theirs." It's a good doc in this form, but I miss Ken Kesey's melancholy contribution to Completely Cuckoo--the late author has been deleted entirely from this redux.

Eight "Additional Scenes" (squeezed to 2.35:1 in their 16x9 enhancement, for reasons unknown) totalling thirteen minutes show orderlies harassing Sampson's Chief and provide a look at last of a silly scene--McMurphy strutting around without pants--we see in stills from the play at the beginning of "The Making of 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'", when Kirk Douglas owned the Nicholson role. The surprisingly profane theatrical trailer (1.85:1, 16x9), cast and crew filmographies, and a list of the awards received by the film round out the Warner set, which I'd endorse without hesitation for the gorgeous video alone.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
133 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.78:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
French Mono
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, French, Spanish
DVD-9 + DVD-5
Region One
Warner

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ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD
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Published: September 23, 2002