One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) movie poster

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

"In this clean, orderly, disciplined world, who needs guys like McMurphy? Everybody."
ThumbScore
👍 91%Google users liked it ⓘ
Critics Score
🎬 88%
Drama

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Director
Runtime
2h 13m
Rated
R
Country
United States of America
Language
English
TMDB Rating
8.4/10 (11,277 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
93%
Metacritic
84

Cast

Jack Nicholson as Randle Patrick McMurphy · 76% avg
Brad Dourif as Billy Bibbit · 73% avg
Louise Fletcher as Nurse Mildred Ratched · 73% avg
Danny DeVito as Martini · 73% avg
William Redfield as Dale Harding · 82% avg
Scatman Crothers as Orderly Turkle · 78% avg
Christopher Lloyd as Max Taber · 74% avg
Will Sampson as Chief Bromden · 81% avg

Is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest good?

Yes. 91% of real audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 88%.

Where it ranks on ThumbScore

Rank in its genre
#95 / 3335 · Drama
Rank in its year
#2 / 20 · 1975
Rank among its director's films
#1 / 6 · Miloš Forman

By audience score, among films with 500 or more votes.

Overview

A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward. Wikipedia ↗

About the Film

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on Ken Kesey's 1962 novel. Jack Nicholson stars as Randle Patrick McMurphy, a charming, rebellious criminal who feigns mental illness to serve his sentence in a psychiatric hospital rather than a prison work farm. Once inside, McMurphy disrupts the ward's repressive order maintained by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, encouraging the other patients — including the enormous, seemingly mute Chief Bromden played by Will Sampson — to assert their individuality and challenge the institution's dehumanizing control.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest became only the second film in history to win all five major Academy Awards — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay — a feat previously accomplished only by It Happened One Night in 1934. Jack Nicholson's McMurphy remains one of the most charismatic and beloved performances in cinema, his anarchic energy and genuine compassion for the other patients creating a character who embodied the counterculture's resistance to institutional authority. Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched was equally iconic as the face of bureaucratic cruelty — her calm, pleasant demeanor masking an absolute commitment to control that made her more frightening than any overt villain.

The film earned $108 million worldwide on a $4.4 million budget. Its influence on how popular culture depicts mental health institutions, patient rights, and the conflict between individual freedom and institutional control has been profound and enduring.

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