“Miloš Forman’s 1975 version of Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, stars Jack Nicholson is Mac McMurphy, the subversive wildman and incorrigible troublemaker, sent down for statutory rape, whose unstable behaviour gets him a transfer to what he clearly thinks will be the cushy option of the mental institution.
“All too late, Mac discovers that the set term of his prison sentence has been changed to an open-ended incarceration, dependent on psychiatric assessment. So Mac leads a revolt against the spirit-crushing regime of pills and electroconvulsive treatment and against the icy control of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).
“Nurse Ratched though is not the simple villain original audiences may remember, despite her vindictive humiliation of poor, shy Billy. She is more like a professional who refuses to be bullied by a bunch of men. The often forgotten case-study scene shows her to be thoughtful and caring: her subdued, accessibly real performance stands up as well as Nicholson’s fireworks.” - The Guardian
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