The film stars Jack Nicholson as a new patient at a mental institution and Louise Fletcher as the domineering head nurse. Originally announced in with Kirk Douglas starring, the film took 13 years to develop. The producers shot the film in the Oregon State Hospital , an actual psychiatric hospital, which is also the novel's setting. The hospital is still in operation, though the original buildings in the film have been demolished. The film was released on November 19, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest received critical acclaim, and is considered by critics and audiences to be one of the greatest films ever made.
In , the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress , and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In Oregon, Randle McMurphy is incarcerated for the statutory rape of a year-old girl, which he claims he committed under the assumption that she was 18 years-old with five previous arrests for assault.
He feigns mental illness so he can be moved to a mental institution and avoid hard labor at a work farm. The medical ward is dominated by the cold, passive-aggressive Nurse Ratched who intimidates her patients and maintains control through fear. The other patients include young, anxious, stuttering Billy Bibbit; Charlie Cheswick, who is prone to temper tantrums; delusional, child-like Martini; the articulate and repressed Dale Harding; belligerent and profane Max Taber; epileptics Jim Sefelt and Bruce Fredrickson; quiet but violent-minded Scanlon; tall, deaf-mute Native American Chief Bromden; and several others with chronic conditions.
Ratched sees McMurphy's lively, rebellious presence as a threat to her authority, to which she responds by confiscating and rationing the patients' cigarettes and suspending their card-playing privileges.
McMurphy finds himself in a battle of wills against Ratched. One night, he makes a bet with the other inmates that he can escape by tearing a hydrotherapy fountain off its hinges and throwing it out the window, but is unable to lift it. Shortly after, he steals a charter bus, picks up his girlfriend Candy, and escapes with several patients to go fishing, exposing them to the outside world and encouraging them to discover their abilities and find self-confidence.
