Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #607 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-10-14
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: PAL, Special Edition
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 128 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the key movies of the 1970s, when exciting, groundbreaking, personal films were still being made in Hollywood, Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest emphasised the humanistic story at the heart of Ken Kesey's more hallucinogenic novel. Jack Nicholson was born to play the part of Randle Patrick McMurphy, the rebellious inmate of a psychiatric hospital who fights back against the authorities' cold attitudes of institutional superiority, as personified by Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). It's the classic antiestablishment tale of one man asserting his individuality in the face of a repressive, conformist system--and it works on every level. Forman populates his film with memorably eccentric faces, and gets such freshly detailed and spontaneous work from his ensemble that the picture sometimes feels like a documentary. Unlike a lot of films pitched at the "youth culture" of the 1970s, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest really hasn't dated a bit, because the qualities of human nature that Forman captures--playfulness, courage, inspiration, pride, stubbornness--are universal and timeless. The film swept the Academy Awards for 1976, winning in all the major categories (picture, director, actor, actress, screenplay) for the first time since Frank Capra's It Happened One Night in 1931. --Jim Emerson

Amazon.co.uk Review
A big Oscar winner in 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest still holds up remarkably well. Ken Kesey's novel, an allegory of repression and rebellion set in a mental hospital in the early 1960s, is cannily adapted by Czech director Milos Forman into a comedy drama with a cool, unassuming, near-documentary look. Jack Nicholson has his most jacknicholsonian role as Randle P McMurphy, a livewire troublemaker who unwisely cons his way out of prison and into a mental institution without realising he has switched from serving a sentence with a release date to being committed until adjudged sane by the same people he is winding up on a daily basis. Louise Fletcher, in a career-defining turn, is Nurse Ratched, the soft-spoken sadist who represents the worst type of matronly authoritarianism and clashes with Randle all down the line.

Taking another look at the picture after all these years, it's a surprise that all the unknown actors who seemed like real mental patients have graduated to becoming prolific character actor stars: Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, Brad Dourif, the late Will Sampson, Sidney Lassick, Michael Berryman. Unlike many Best Picture Oscar winners, this deals with profound subject matter without seeming self-important: Forman's approach and all-round great acting make it play as a small character story as well as a Big Statement about the human condition. Full marks also for Jack Nitzsche's musical saw-based score.

On the DVD: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest comes to DVD in a two-disc special edition with a great-looking anamorphic 1.85:1 print and 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack, plus tracks in French and Italian and optional subtitles in half a dozen languages. Disc 2 has the trailer, about 13 minutes of deleted scenes (mostly from the first third of the film, and all pretty good) and a making-of retrospective documentary with interesting material from producers Michael Douglas (who inherited the rights from Kirk) and Saul Zaentz, Forman, screenwriter Bo Goldman and many cast-members (though not Nicholson). There's also a commentary track by Forman, Douglas and others which repeats a few things from the documentary but also goes into more scene-specific detail about the development and shooting. --Kim Newman

Special Features
English
Region 2

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest movies ever made
This film will always have a an important place in film history but I think what has given it that place is 1. The topic of the film and 2. The sheer acting ability of Jack Nicholson.

Nicholson here is a convicted criminal who fakes insanity to grab a reduced sentence sets about creating his own rules in a mental hospital. Nicholson portrays something in us all, a free spirit confined and reduced to live by morals and codes he does not recognise if only to survive. The film explores the disastrous effects of rebellion to those rules and how the desire for freedom if defeated in one can be ignited in another.

The film explores how others can be so easily lead and also how easily they can be defeated (Such as when Nicholson arranges for a prostitute for one of the younger inmates and the party he sets up), how fear can instill obedience (Nicholson's punishments) The film is remarkable in its limited use of sets and instead relies on Nicholson's remarkable acting ability.

Nicholson is simply superb in this film. His facial expression, his body movement say almost a thousand words more than his actual lines convey. He is larger than life, eccentric and devious all the same. At times you can relate to the character at others be pulling your hair out at his rash behavior. That Nicholson can stir such emotion in a viewer is a testament to his acting ability.

Probably the most powerful scene in the entire film is where Nicholson says to the others while pointing to a huge ceramic wash basin that is sealed into the ground "I am going to rip that out, put it through the window and break out of here" The other 'inmates' mock him and laugh amongst themselves (Probably thinking to themselves 'He is madder than we are') Nicholson begins to attempt to pull the basin out, he strains and strains and slowly the others begin to think "Maybe he is going to do it" When finally he gives up. He walks past the others, some mocking others not knowing where to look. He walks halfway down the corridor then turns to them and says "At least I tried!"

Forgotten why we love Jack?...here's why!
Typical of Nicholson, one of his finest performances is that in a role that is ethically dubious. Held in a small town asylum, the character of Randall Patrick MacMurphy is that of a maladjusted ex-con whose don't-give-a-damn attitude is either something to admire for his audacity in the face of such wretched characters as Nurse Ratchett, or one to lament for his lack of understanding and respect for those around him in society. A film with moments of both poignancy and humor, it is both shocking and occasionally touching as Mac (Nicholson) raises the spirits of several of his co-patients in the nursing home whilst retaining the demeanor of an untrustworthy criminal. Essentially concerned with the evolving of Nicholsons character, the film studies the essence of various levels of behavior when the human spirit is locked up by the society that was designed to protect it. Wondrous to watch but might leave a slightly sour taste to those expecting a happy ending. Theres much to be said for conclusions as you are left to draw your own concerning the state of Nichosons mind after the credits begin to role. Who really decides what constitutes insanity anyway??

Hilariously funny, grim as hell, total masterpiece
Directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher, this is a 5-oscar-winning masterpiece and deservedly so. I first saw this picture in '76 and have watched it more times than is decent since, so much so I almost know the script by heart. Based on the novel by Ken Kesey and set in an Oregon mental institute, this tragicomedy is the single most profound drama I have ever seen and with a denouement so powerful and unforgettable I feel my life has been changed and enriched by the privilege of witnessing it. Whatever you think of Jack Nicholson, his performance here as R P McMurphy - a prison-dodging, sane-as-can-be sex offender confined for psychiatric assessment - is mesmerizing. As too are the performances of Louise Fletcher (Head Nurse Ratched) and a supporting ensemble of actors including Danny deVito, Christopher Lloyd, Will Sampson, William Redfield and Brad Dourif, all playing utterly convincing roles, indistinguishable - as I'm sure any psychiatric worker would vouch - from real-life mental patients.

It is the ebullient McMurphy's disruption of the tranquility of the hospital ward that brings him into conflict with Ratched's stone-hearted, authoritarian matron. She runs a tight ship convinced it's for the benefit of the patients. Her idea of therapy is to have everyone sitting in a circle, ostensibly to benefit from discussion and to air their mundane issues, but with the main agenda of maintaining and reinforcing a despiriting regime of rigid conformity. These sessions often start morosely and silently but invariably end with raucous and hilarious shouting matches which are so perfectly and authentically played by the ensemble cast that you feel as though you're watching a documentary, but a riveting one at that. Here also we are introduced to some of the more vocal patients who though quirky and laden with issues, are generally more articulate and intelligent than those beyond the asylum. Outside of these lively discourses, the patients are kept subdued by daily dosages of drugs. Any hint of insurrection is quelled by fear of Ratched's excoriating disapproval and her arsenal of truncheon-wielding orderlies, disposed on her say-so to remove a patient by force to another ward where electroconvulsive therapy is meted out to the specially deserving.

R P McMurphy lands onto this lugubrious, ordered world like a fun-loving Martian. He is a boisterous, big-hearted, roguish extrovert and, once settled in, wins the confidence and in turn the admiration and hero worship of his fellow inmates. Excepting the "chronics", McMurphy can scarcely distinguish (and neither can we) between the patients and "the average a**hole walking about out there on the street". But the trouble begins when he bets with his fellow patients that he can, within a week, "stick a bug so far up Nurse Ratched's a** she won't know whether to s**t or wind her wrist-watch." This sets the scene for psychological warfare with, on the one side, McMurphy leading a bunch of fired up, newly assertive patients, and on the other, the system, or the "Combine", fronted by Nurse Ratched. The conflict comes to a head when McMurphy arranges a wild party for the patients to liven up their otherwise monotonous and colourless existences. However, it will be seen in the devastating and brutal consequences that the system deems itself having more to lose than those who would dare to confront it. Catering for individual aspirations and for patient happiness it seems were very far beyond the remit of the mental healthcare system as it was. With undertones of Spartacus - possibly explaining Kirk Douglas' interest, whose son Michael brought the novel to the screen - this story brings into searing focus the cruelty and inhumanity of sectors of mental healthcare in sixties US.

Now to say further would be to give too much away. But believe me, this is a genuinely funny, bitterly tragic, remarkable, compelling, totally absorbing, emotionally draining and brilliant picture, so rightly deserving of its stature as one of the best films of all time - in this reviewer's opinion, the very best.