One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: 50 Years On

Miloš Forman’s Oscar-showered adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel remains a provocative powerhouse half a century later

Credit: United Artists

Warning: Contains spoilers

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) features one of cinema’s greatest villains. Louise Fletcher’s cold portrayal of psychiatric hospital worker Nurse Ratched chilled me to the bone when I first saw this, aged sixteen, at a 16mm film society screening. Ratched’s rule of fear, passive-aggression, and cruel manipulations make her an antagonist for the ages. In particular, her sadistic adherence to rules-for-the-sake-of-rules at the expense of basic human compassion gets under my skin like nothing and no one else, save perhaps Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007).

We’ve all encountered Nurse Ratched types, though (hopefully) not to such an extreme. Perhaps that’s why the very thought of her makes my skin crawl. I fully understand why, after her downright evil actions towards the end of the film, Jack Nicholson’s character Randle McMurphy snaps and attempts to strangle her. But in celebrating the 50th anniversary of Miloš Forman’s masterful adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel, expressing my loathing of Ratched is causing me to get ahead of myself.