One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975.
Directed by Miloš Forman.
Starring Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, William Redfield, Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito, Brad Dourif, Scatman Crothers, Sydney Lassick, and Will Sampson.
SYNOPSIS:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest celebrates its 50th anniversary with its 4K Ultra HD debut from Warner Bros. The film looks great, and the studio included a couple new interviews, but buyer beware: you don’t get all of the extras found in previous editions, so you may want to hold onto those older discs.
Only three movies have ever been nominated for all of the so-called “big five” Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay) and won all of them. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of those films, along with The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and It Happened One Night (1934).
Revisiting Cuckoo on the occasion of its 50th anniversary and this new 4K Ultra HD release from Warner Bros., I think it remains worthy of that accolade. Based on the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey, it remains a raw, visceral portrait of the ways the system will pretty much always win when it faces someone like Jack Nicholson’s Randle Patrick “R.P.” McMurphy character.
McMurphy is brought to a mental institution after feigning mental illness to avoid the work farm detail at the prison where he was incarcerated for statutory rape. There, he encounters a wide variety of people, some of whom are there voluntarily: Martini (Danny DeVito), Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick), Dale Harding (William Redfield), Billy Bibit (Brad Dourif), Max Taber (Christopher Lloyd), and the enigmatic, seemingly mute and deaf Native American known as “Chief” (Will Sampson).
Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) oversees the ward, running it with icy efficiency and an unwillingness to put up with crap from anyone, especially McMurphy. He does his best to push her buttons, of course, and rebels against the institution by doing things like taking his fellow patients on an impromptu fishing trip with a couple of his female friends, but the system only squeezes its grip on him even tighter.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is notable not only for its sweep of the major Oscar awards in 1976, with Nicholson and Fletcher winning for their roles. Dourif and Lloyd made their feature film debuts with this one, and the former was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, although he lost to George Burns in The Sunshine Boys. If you haven’t seen this one yet, it’s worth checking out.
The version of the film found on this 4K Ultra HD platter is the restoration that was performed several months ago, and I’d say it’s the pinnacle of its home video presentation. If you could somehow take your home theater setup back in time and watch a first-run showing of this movie in the theater and then go home and compare it to this, I doubt you’d see much of a difference.
Warner Bros. didn’t include a Blu-ray with this one, which has been the trend with their 4K releases the last couple years, but you do get the obligatory digital code. You also don’t get all the bonus features that were previously available in DVD and Blu-ray editions of the film, so you may want to hold onto those.
However, you do get a pair of newly recorded interviews that total about 23 minutes. They were recorded on Zoom and feature Lloyd, DeVito, Dourif, and producer Michael Douglas (his father was originally going to make this movie in the 1960s) looking back on the film from its inception as a novel and then later a play (DeVito actually reprised his stage role for the film) to its legacy 50 years later.
Also included is the excellent 86-minute 1997 making-of, Completely Cuckoo, which was chopped down to 47 minutes for inclusion in some previous editions but is shown in full here. I’m glad Warner Bros. put it on this disc, since it was one of the final opportunities to get much of the cast and crew together, as well as Kesey, while they were able to talk about the film. Like many classics, it won’t be long until there’s no one left with first-hand knowledge of the making of this film.
Finally, you get five deleted scenes running a little over nine minutes total. Some previous editions have additional excised footage that isn’t found here, for whatever reason. A commentary track with Forman, Douglas, and fellow producer Saul Zaentz also isn’t on the platter, which is a head-scratcher since it wouldn’t have taken up much room.
I’ll close by noting the … interesting … cover imagery choice by the studio. Not sure why they didn’t go with the classic shot of Nicholson in his McMurphy garb.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
