One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the story of Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) who has been sentenced to a short term of confinement for contributing to the delinquency of a minor instead of the more serious crime of statutory rape. Rather than spend his time in jail he convinces his guards he's crazy and is sent to a hospital specializing in psychiatric disorders.

Quickly asserting himself over the other inmates lorded over by the frighteningly clinical Nurse Ratched (Louise Brooks) he wages a campaign for control of the ward against her authority. As the conflict of wills escalates, and as some of the other patients begin expressing themselves under McMurphy's inspiration, he is finally lobotomized for being a danger to himself and others.

It's a straightforward story delivered through straightforward filmmaking technique and it remains one of the great American screen adaptations. Having its origin in Ken Kesey's novel of the same name that was inspired by his experience working at the Agnew correctional facility in San Jose, CA, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest began its cinematic life as a movie option purchased by Kirk Douglas as a personal star vehicle. After never finding the time or resources to produce the film over the course of many years he was eventually persuaded by his son, Michael, to turn-over the project to him, not least because the elder Douglas was then becoming too old to play the part.

Quickly assembling the behind-the-scenes personnel around the Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben script and under the direction of Milos Forman, producers Michael Douglas and Saul Zaentz originally approached James Caan with the starring role. After refusing the part it was offered to Jack Nicholson who accepted and was rumored to have prepared for it by admitting himself as a patient into a mental hospital.

To ensure the right look and feel of the film authentic mental patients were cast as extras, along with a small group of then unknown supporting actors including Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit, Christopher Lloyd as Taber and Will Sampson as Chief Bromden. Design elements were put into place with harsh institutional lights and sealed cells. The iconography was closely associated with its prison-like setting where individuality, will power and personal freedom was as closely restricted through a regimen of enforced daily narcotics as it was through the closed spaces of the hospital. It was even rumored that Nicholson underwent ECT therapy during the scene where his character is similarly tortured part way through the film.

Budgeted at $3 million, the film of Ken Kesey's book that he's reputed to have never seen due to creative differences was a certifiable hit. By the end of its run it yielded nearly $112 million in box office gross and was still outperformed by Steven Spielberg's Jaws although its success was a tribute to literate screen drama and adult subjects rendered without the fuel of screen effects or graphic violence.

Oscar nominated for Best Picture against Stanley Kubrick's historical tale Barry Lyndon, Sidney Lumet's inner-city melodrama Dog Day Afternoon, Robert Altman's sprawling social satire Nashville and Spielberg's shark movie, Forman's film achieved an all but unprecedented feat at the 1976 Oscars ceremony. It won the top five prizes of Best Picture, Director, Writer(s), Actor and Actress and joined the only other film to have ever completed the Academy Awards coup de grace, 1934's It Happened One Night.

For once Academy voters deemed a commercially popular, artistically impressive and critically acclaimed film their top award winner. While such a triptych in movie history is uncommon, increasingly the Oscars race has been a combination of various considerations including overall merit, box office success, star quality and genre. Aside from its value as rather delicious entertainment, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest managed its success in virtually all of these areas as well.

It was released to widespread celebration and was rewarded with millions of dollars in tickets sales. It also made an even bigger star of Jack Nicholson whose portrayal of a courageous odd-man out caught in a social vacuum intent on robbing him of his individuality remains oddly affecting to this day.

To Nicholson-aficionados famous scenes abound and it's no wonder we remember the film as being a tour de force in terms of screen performance. McMurphy is a veritable screen icon whose rough, criminal exterior hides a sensitive, though misogynistic, man of considerable intelligence and imagination. His ribald humor, receding hairline, accusatory voice and willingness to change the world all at once was a hollow-point bullet shot through the heart of America in 1975. He appeared on screens at the end of the war in Vietnam and during the burgeoning '70s with its simultaneous maturation of baby boomers, the rise of culture wars along the lines of race, class, gender and sexual orientation and the tidal wave of corruption symbolized by the Nixon administration.

McMurphy's outsider quality was a point of identification for the times but also a fatalistic note about personal rebellion and non-conformity. Despite all his mixed qualities McMurphy was indeed rendered a lobotomized vegetable by film's end so it's Chief Bromden's escape from Nurse Ratched that eases the film's conclusion and makes it a tribute to the will of a better tomorrow.