One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Posted by Elliot

First film since It Happened One Night (1935) to win all five top Oscars (best picture, best director, best actor, best actress, and best screenplay—from Ken Kesey’s novel). Jack Nicholson plays a man who voluntarily enters an insane asylum and then begins to undermine the repressive and dehumanizing discipline. Louise Fletcher is the controlling, iron-willed head nurse who butts heads with him at every turn. Both depressing and uplifting, the film celebrates nonconformity and the need to question authority.