One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

1975

The adaptation by Milos Forman of Ken Kesey's novel follows a convict who fakes mental illness to serve his sentence somewhere easier than a prison work farm. What he finds is a ward run on quiet compliance, and his refusal to go along turns the other patients into something close to a movement. Jack Nicholson plays McMurphy and Louise Fletcher plays Nurse Ratched, with Will Sampson, Brad Dourif, and early roles for Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd. It swept the five major Academy Awards, something only two other films have ever done.