One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Background
•	Produced in 1975
•	One of the greatest American films of all time.
•	Allegorical theme set in the world of an authentic mental hospital (Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon.
•	A place of rebellion exhibited by a energetic, flamboyant, wise-guy anti-hero against  the establish , institutional authority and status-quo attitudes.
Cultural Context
•	Mid-70s baby-boomers’ counter-culture was ripe for a film dramatizing rebellion and insubordination against oppressive bureaucracy and an insistence upon rights, self-expression, and freedom.
Title
•	Derived from familiar, tongue-twisting Mother’s Good children’s folk song called Vintery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn.
•	The ones that fly east and west are diametrically opposed to each other and represent the two combatants in the film.
•	The one that files over the cuckoo’s next (the mental hospital) is the giant, deaf-mute Chief.
Characters
•	“Mac” McMurphy
–	Energetic, swaggering, wisecracking non-conformist, rebellious.3
•	“Chief” – aka Broom
–	A “deaf and dumb Indian” “as big as a god-damn tree trunk”.
•	Billy Bibbit
–	Shy, virginal, impressionable, and deathly afraid of his mother.
Characters

•	Dale Harding
–	Relatively sane but unable to get over his wife’s betrayal and adultery. 
–	Ineffectual and rationalizing intellectual.
•	Charlie Cheswick
–	Insecure, neurotic, lacking self-confidence
•	Martini
–	Short, smiling, immature personality
•	Taber
–	A cynical, trouble-making sadist.
Why He is In
•	Dr. Spivey, the head doctor in the hospital tells him he is being evaluated because they think he is faking it.
•	McMurphy’s Assessment:
–	“Well as near as I can figure out, it’s ‘cause I, uh, fight and f—k too much.”
Environment
•	Assigned to a ward supervised by a consistent, bureaucratic authoritarian named Nurse Mildred Ratched.
•	Senses he must battle her.
•	Starts with subtle mind-games, rebels against correct behaviour and rules of the hospital.
•	Patients organized and controlled through a rigid set of authoritarian rules and regulations.