One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest: 50 years on Jack Nicholson’s greatest performance is as fresh as ever

By Daniel O'Brien, Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Director Miloš Forman’s masterpiece, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, turns 50 this year. Despite this milestone, it remains a fresh and timeless piece of cinema from the New Hollywood movement.

Combining iconic performances and universal themes of individualism versus the establishment, Forman’s film is perhaps Jack Nicholson’s greatest performance. He plays Randle Patrick McMurphy, a charismatic convict feigning mental illness in order to serve his sentence at a psychiatric hospital and avoid prison labour.

Here, he becomes an unlikely leader to the ward’s patients,…

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