Posted on 11/20/2025 9:22:17 PM PST by Cronos
The 1975 drama, one of the only films to ever receive the big five Oscars, remains a touchstone of American cinema with a resonant message of resisting conformity.
Amovie winning the big five Academy Awards – best picture along with honoring the lead actor and actress, writing and directing – happens so rarely that there’s not much use in examining the three movies that have pulled it off for common ground. But among It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs, it may be Cuckoo’s Nest, released 50 years ago on Wednesday, that feels like the unlikeliest across-the-board triumph. It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs both belong to rarely awarded genres (romantic comedy and horror, respectively), which makes their big wins unusual but also clearcut: here is an example of the best this type of movie has to offer. Cuckoo’s Nest, meanwhile, is potentially much thornier. It’s a comedy-drama made at least in part as allegory – an anti-conformity story of fomenting 1960s social rebellion, disguised as a movie about lovable patients at a mental health facility.
Chief narrates the book, while the movie hews closer to the perspective of RP McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who enters the facility having faked mental illness in the hopes that he can avoid serving out a prison work-camp sentence. Though the doctors don’t seem entirely convinced by his ruse, his behavior is apparently erratic enough for him to stay at least a little while. His attempts to bring more individualism and fun to his cohabitants runs afoul of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who exercises tight control over the ward.
. “I tried, didn’t I? Goddammit, at least I did that,”
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
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The book wasn’t that great. I couldn’t finish it.
The ridiculous exaggeration of the state of mental hospitals led to a landmark ACLU lawsuit, with the yellow journalism assistance of Geraldo Rivera, which "won" the "freedom" of mental patients, who were then released en masse to become a nuclear explosion of "The Homeless" on the streets of every city in the 1980s.
Michael Douglas may be a suave actor but as a producer he has been a demon to this nation with his twin propaganda films - this film, and the absurdist paranoid film "The China Syndrome" that led America to stop its nuclear energy expansion cold.
Most movies are fake caricatures of real life. Unfortunately too many think it is real life. Very few movies ring true
ECT was a life saver therapy for treatment resistant major depression. This movie pretty well ended it’s use. Who knows how many suicides and needless suffering could have been prevented.
Sometimes a Great Notion is a 1971 American drama film from a book by this drug-addled screwball, directed by Paul Newman and starring Newman, Henry Fonda, Michael Sarrazin and Lee Remick. The cast also includes Richard Jaeckel in an Academy Award-nominated performance.
It’s pretty good.
The closing down of insane asylums by the Democreats and the loosing of the inmates onto the public streets and in our cities and towns that continues to this day has resulted in horrific mayhem and loss of innocent lives in the name of the so-called dignity of the mentally ill and the insane. When is the left finally going to get its comeuppance for unleashing this terrible scourge upon America’s communities?
Jack Nicholson.
“Mmmm, Juicy Fruit!”
Grave syntactical flaw in the first sentence! FAIL!
The phrase "one of the only films to ever receive the big five Oscars" is awkward and logically imprecise.
"One of the only" is a problematic construction because "only" already implies exclusivity. Grammatically, it creates a clash: "one of" suggests membership in a larger set, while "only" suggests a set of one.
A clearer phrasing would be "one of the few films to ever receive…" or simply "among the rare films to receive…."
Is this what we have come to expect from The Guardian?!
Regards,
Waitress: You want me to hold the chicken, huh?
Bobby: I want you to hold it between your knees.
Five Easy Pieces
My parents and siblings told me they liked me a lot better after my frontal lobotomy.
I was instantly captivated!
The novel's story is told through the eyes of Chief Bromden, whose hallucinations and paranoid visions create a surreal, almost dreamlike portrayal of the asylum. The fog machine, distorted perceptions of authority, and allegorical elements give the book an unsettling, otherworldly quality.
The film shifts the perspective to that of Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), converting the story into a more straightforward, character-driven drama. The surreal elements were stripped away, leaving a gritty but conventional depiction of institutional life.
The novel's surreal and allegorical tone were discarded. The hallucinatory critique of institutional conformity was reduced to a more-literal battle of wills between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.
A great shame!
Regards,
one of the only films
Tis alone says AI, and what else can I say?
I had never heard of the move “the China syndrome”
thanks
Watching Chinatown in the background atm. A favorite movie.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show is also 50 this year. And there was never a period when it was not being shown in theaters somewhere, even today. In my opinion, a much better picture than OFOTCN.
Wbere have you been? 30 years ago this would have been a valid criticism of the Guardian. Today, the fact that all of the words in the opening sentence are spelled correctly and there is verb tense agreement is a thumbs up for the ‘Grauniad’.
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