By the time of The Last Detail (1973), Jack Nicholson had manifested what a counterculture star was capable of in New American Cinema. Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was like a cellophane wrapped version of such insights. But it is a remarkable film. In one latently insane Nordic nation it becamethe most viewed movie of the 1970s. Besides, it is an authentically rebellious achievement that breaks the boundaries of comedy and tragedy. Nicholson’s anarchistic star performance is inseparable from the fantastic ensemble cast. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of Nicholson’s three key works in this phase, an interesting cycle in its own right, in which Nicholson was shepherded by a Pole (Polański), an Italian (Antonioni) and a Czech (Forman). The most famous of the three is One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, based on the novel by Ken Kesey. Forman and his star shared an interest in ceremonies, psychic breakdowns, systems of coercion and occasions for civil disobedience – what else is One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest if not a vision of a country as a great madhouse? The apostle of freedom Randle P. McMurphy (Nicholson) is at least saner than the system and is thus to be crushed, otherwise the system would not be worthy of its reputation. The observations of the director and the star about the contrast – or the line drawn in water – between sanity and insanity are never trivial. Nor do they stray into the purely gloomy register generally favoured by movies about mental hospitals. Nicholson always gains as an actor when cast against a strong “normal” character, here the supremely expressionless Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who handles even the most disturbing situations in a way that does not so much as acknowledge the existence of the individual (or his dignity).

Peter von Bagh,Tähtien kirja [The Book of the Stars], Otava, Helsinki 2006. Edited in English by Antti Alanen