By the time Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest swept the 1976 Academy Awards—winning all five major categories, a feat no film had managed since 1934—it had already spent years fighting to get made. Kirk Douglas bought the rights to Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel, starred in the Broadway adaptation, and spent over a decade failing to convince a single studio to fund it. His son Michael eventually inherited the rights and partnered with producer Saul Zaentz to push it through, filming the entire production inside an actual functioning psychiatric hospital in Salem, Oregon.
Forman, a Czech director who had survived Nazi occupation and fled the Soviet crackdown on the Prague Spring, brought an uncommon personal understanding of institutional power to the material. The cast he assembled reads like a who’s who of actors on the verge of breaking through: Jack Nicholson, Brad Dourif, Danny DeVito, and Christopher Lloyd all appear here, several of them reprising roles from earlier stage productions. What Forman made from all of it was something rare — a film that functions equally well as dark comedy, character study, and political allegory, where the real subject isn’t mental illness but what institutions do to the people inside them.
McMurphy Arrives at the Ward
The story kicks off with a criminal named Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) who, back in September 1963, got slapped with a prison sentence for raping a 15-year-old girl. The charge is technically statutory rape, and McMurphy had been serving his time on a prison farm in Oregon. Given his long rap sheet, the cops decide to ship him off to a psychiatric hospital to figure out whether he’s actually mentally ill. He gets escorted there by police, and the whole time he’s got this casual, almost cheerful look on his face, like he doesn’t have a care in the world.
Once he arrives, the nurses immediately take him in to check his belongings. While he’s waiting, Murphy tries to strike up a conversation with this tall, massive patient standing nearby, but the guy just stares blankly and says nothing. Another patient, Billy Bibbit (Brad Dourif), explains that the big guy is a deaf-mute Native American. The ward’s got all kinds of patients with different issues. Billy himself stutters and deals with severe anxiety, Dale Harding (William Redfield) has a short fuse, Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) was bullied badly at some point, and then there’s Chief Bromden (Will Sampson), the big Indian who supposedly can’t hear or speak.
These are just a few of the patients on the ward. There are plenty of other patients in far worse shape, including the paranoid and unpredictable Max Taber (Christopher Lloyd) and the cheerfully erratic Martini (Danny DeVito). Murphy gets taken to see Dr. Spivey (Dean R. Brooks), who asks him why he was sent there. Murphy just shrugs and says he doesn’t know. The doctor tells him his file says he’s a troublemaker who talks when he’s not supposed to, acts up, and slacks off. But the real reason he’s there is for evaluation. The file also shows he’s been arrested five times for assault.
Dr. Spivey says the cops want to know whether Murphy is faking mental illness just to dodge prison time, because under American law, someone who’s genuinely mentally ill can’t be imprisoned and has to receive treatment instead. Murphy, for his part, claims there’s nothing wrong with his head. Next up is a group therapy session where they’re supposed to talk through one of the patients’ problems. That day, Harding’s troubled marriage is on the table, but nobody wants to open their mouth. Eventually one patient speaks up, others disagree, and suddenly the whole room erupts with everyone talking over each other.
Through all of it, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) just sits there smiling, which Murphy finds deeply unsettling. Ratched runs the ward with what looks like calm professionalism but is really a calculated system of subtle humiliation and psychological control. The next day, all the patients are let outside. They can play, sit around, breathe some fresh air, or ride the hospital bus around. Murphy walks over to Chief and tries to teach him how to play basketball. It’s not easy, but Chief manages to follow along. From a distance, Nurse Ratched quietly watches Murphy.
That night, Murphy gets a card game going, with stakes, of course. He gets increasingly frustrated because the music is blasting so loud he can barely explain the rules. When it’s time for everyone’s meds, he asks Nurse Ratched to turn the music down. She refuses, saying a lot of the patients are elderly and might not hear anything if the volume drops. Murphy doesn’t push back and just pretends to swallow his pills. From this point on, he can’t stand Nurse Ratched.
The World Series Power Struggle
The next evening session is another group therapy discussion, and Harding’s marriage is still the hot topic. Again, nobody wants to talk. Murphy raises his hand and pitches the idea of swapping their evening schedule to watch the World Series, which happened to be starting that day, and he says he never misses it. Nurse Ratched shuts it down, saying the hospital schedule exists for a reason and any sudden change might throw the patients off. Murphy says they could go back to the regular schedule once the tournament’s done. She puts it to a vote, but only three hands go up. Everyone else is either scared or unsure.
After the session, the patients gather in the bathroom. Harding, who’s got the shortest fuse in the room, gets into it with Taber, who loves to provoke people. Murphy douses them both to break it up. Then he makes a bet that he’ll lift the heavy marble hydrotherapy fixture in the bathroom and hurl it through the window so he can sneak out to watch the game at a bar. A few of them laugh it off, saying there’s no way he can pull that off. He tries anyway. The thing is way heavier than he expected, and he can’t budge it.
In the next therapy session, Nurse Ratched turns the spotlight on Billy’s issues. Billy looks miserable under her questioning. Cheswick, who’s been bullied himself, pipes up and tells her that Billy doesn’t like being pushed to talk, so maybe they should drop it and move on. Murphy once again suggests changing their evening schedule. Another vote, and this time everyone sitting raises their hand. But that’s only nine people. The ward has 18 patients total, and the other nine are too far gone to understand what’s even being discussed. Murphy asks for a moment to find one more vote. He nudges Chief, who slowly raises his hand. The final tally should be 10 to 8 in Murphy’s favor, but Nurse Ratched declares the voting period closed. Murphy is furious.
The thing is, watching the game wouldn’t have harmed anyone psychologically. Nurse Ratched knew it too, but she also knew that if she gave in, she’d start losing her grip on the ward. But Murphy isn’t done. He plops himself down in front of a dark TV and starts doing a play-by-play commentary like it’s a real game, getting the other patients to crowd around him, completely swept up in the imaginary match. Nobody listens when Nurse Ratched tells them to stop. Because of the chaos, Murphy gets hauled in to see Dr. Spivey. The doctor asks if Murphy likes it at the hospital. Murphy says his only problem is Nurse Ratched, since she’s dishonest, manipulative, and plays games. Dr. Spivey doesn’t really get it, and as far as he’s concerned, she’s one of their best nurses. Murphy has now been there four weeks, and the doctor says he’ll be making his evaluation soon.
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The Unauthorized Fishing Trip
The next morning, out in the yard, Murphy asks Chief to lift him up so he can hop over the fence. He sneaks onto the bus. When the others are herded onto the bus, Murphy takes the wheel. Their first stop is picking up a woman named Candy (Marya Small). From there, they head to the harbor and pass themselves off as a group of doctors renting a boat to go fishing. Doing something new and just getting out does wonders for everyone’s mood. Murphy hands the wheel over to Cheswick while he teaches the others how to bait a hook.
Once everyone’s settled in, Murphy disappears below deck with Candy. Martini and some of the others try to peek. Up top, Cheswick suddenly realizes he can’t see anyone, so he panics and abandons the helm to go look for them. The boat starts spinning in circles. Things get chaotic when, right in the middle of everything, someone gets a massive bite on their line. Cheswick and Harding fight over the fishing rod while Murphy and the others wrestle with the line. When they finally dock, the police are waiting for them. It was genuinely reckless, and any one of them could have gotten killed, but they stroll back laughing and showing off their catch.
The doctors conclude that Murphy isn’t insane, just a little unstable and potentially dangerous. One of them had been thinking about sending him back to prison to do farm work. Another doctor asks if there’s anyone on staff who’s close enough to Murphy to help treat him. Dr. Spivey says the only person who’s had consistent contact with him is Nurse Ratched, the one person Murphy despises. Nurse Ratched herself argues that sending Murphy back to prison and putting him on farm duty would just create problems for everyone else, so she wants to keep him in her ward. After the unauthorized field trip, no more recreational outings are approved.
McMurphy’s Indefinite Confinement
So mornings are now just basketball in the yard. Chief’s height makes him invaluable on defense. Then they swim. Murphy had assumed he’d only be there 68 days, but one of the male nurses pulls him aside and tells him the truth, that he stays until the hospital decides to release him. The hospital is essentially his prison now. In the next therapy session, Murphy confronts Nurse Ratched directly and asks why nobody told him the doctors had decided to hold him indefinitely. That’s when he also finds out that most of the patients aren’t committed and are there voluntarily. They could leave whenever they wanted. Harding confirms it. Murphy is floored. He can’t wrap his head around why anyone would choose to stay in a psychiatric hospital, especially Billy, since the kid is young and should be out living his life.
Then one of the patients asks Nurse Ratched why the dorm is locked during the day and on weekends. Cheswick brings up his confiscated cigarettes. She explains the dorm stays locked so they can’t retreat to their rooms right after breakfast. When Cheswick spots Harding smoking and asks for one, Nurse Ratched doesn’t hand any over and Harding won’t share either. She announces that bathroom privileges will be suspended and cigarettes will be rationed from now on, because Murphy was caught running a small gambling operation and the patients have been losing their money and smokes.
Cheswick throws a full-blown tantrum over the cigarettes. Fed up, Murphy smashes the glass on the nurses’ station to grab some smokes and hands them to Cheswick to calm him down. A fight breaks out between Murphy and one of the male attendants. Out of nowhere, Chief jumps in on Murphy’s side, making the whole thing worse. Murphy, Chief, and Cheswick get dragged off to the treatment room. While they’re waiting, Murphy offers Chief a stick of gum, and then completely out of nowhere, Chief says “thank you.” Murphy is stunned. Turns out Chief has been faking the whole time. He’s not deaf, not mute, never was.
Chief later explains that people never paid any attention to him when he pretended not to understand, which made it easier to observe everything around him. Murphy can’t believe it and is blown away that Chief pulled that off for so long. A few minutes later, the nurse comes out wheeling an unconscious Cheswick. Murphy still isn’t sure what’s going on inside. When it’s his turn, he figures it’ll be a routine checkup, but the doctors hit him with electroconvulsive therapy, a treatment that during this era was still widely used as a form of behavioral control rather than strictly for therapeutic purposes. Fortunately the effects don’t last long, and by the next day Murphy is back in the ward.
The Party, Billy, and the Breaking Point
One night, Murphy bribes a night orderly named Turkle (Scatman Crothers) to let Candy and her friend Rose (Louisa Moritz) sneak in with a few bottles of booze. The plan is that once everyone’s drunk enough, Murphy slips out with the two women. He’s already told Chief about the plan and asked him to come along, but Chief passes. The party gets going and trashes the whole ward. Turkle regrets his decision almost immediately and drinks himself into a stupor. Murphy quietly lifts the keys out of Turkle’s pocket, cracks open a window, and says his goodbyes. Before he heads out, Billy pulls him aside and admits he has feelings for Candy. Murphy tells him they’re just friends, so Billy’s welcome to make a move. He also promises to send his address once he gets to Canada.
Seeing how much Billy likes her, Murphy holds off on leaving to give Billy some time with Candy. But then Murphy falls asleep, and the morning staff walks in. Nurse Ratched immediately orders her staff to re-lock the open window and remove Rose, who’s passed out on the couch. She also orders a patient count to make sure no one escaped. Everyone’s accounted for except Billy. The patients can barely contain their laughter when Nurse Ratched asks where he is. After searching every room, they find Billy in bed with Candy. When he walks out, the whole room erupts in applause. When asked, Billy says he’s not ashamed of anything.
Nurse Ratched calmly tells Billy she’s going to have to tell his mother. Billy completely falls apart. He begs and pleads with her not to say a word, then blames Murphy and the others for dragging him into it. Billy is taken to Dr. Spivey’s office and locked in there until the doctor arrives. Murphy, still holding the keys, goes back and opens the window again. He has a clear shot at escaping. But then a nurse screams. They’ve found Billy in Dr. Spivey’s office, covered in blood, having tried to kill himself. Murphy doesn’t go. He runs to see how bad it is. Fortunately, Dr. Spivey shows up right then and Billy gets help in time. While Nurse Ratched is trying to clear everyone away from Spivey’s office, Murphy grabs her by the throat. She probably wouldn’t have survived if the male attendants hadn’t pulled him off.
Some time later, the ward is quiet again. Harding and the others are back to their card games, same as always, just without Billy and without Murphy. What happened to Murphy after that day stays murky, as some say he beat up a guard and escaped while others say he came back in terrible shape. Chief keeps to himself, listening. You can tell he’s worried. Late one night, two orderlies bring Murphy back to his room. The moment they leave, Chief gets up and goes to him. He says he’s ready to run, but Murphy is completely unresponsive. He’s had a lobotomy, a then-common procedure used on patients deemed too disruptive to manage, though by the 1960s it was already losing medical credibility.
Whatever they did to him, he’s not really there anymore. Chief holds him and tells him he won’t leave him like this. Then he picks up a pillow and presses it over Murphy’s face until Murphy stops breathing. After that, Chief goes to the bathroom, lifts the marble hydrotherapy fixture, the same one Murphy couldn’t budge, and hurls it through the window. Glass everywhere. He’s out. The crash wakes Taber up. He watches Chief disappear through the broken window and starts cheering.
