One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey.

The film was the second to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor in Lead Role, Actress in Lead Role, Director, and Screenplay) following It Happened One Night in 1934, an accomplishment not repeated until 1991 by The Silence of the Lambs.

The film is #20 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years… 100 Movies list. It was shot at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon, which was also the setting of the novel.

In 1963 Oregon, Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a recidivist anti-authoritarian criminal serving a short sentence on a prison farm for statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl, is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Although he does not show any overt signs of mental illness, he hopes to avoid hard labor and serve the rest of his sentence in a more relaxed hospital environment.

McMurphy’s ward is run by steely, unyielding Nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who employs subtle humiliation, unpleasant medical treatments and a mind-numbing daily routine to suppress the patients.

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