Guide Note:

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 film directed by Milos Forman. An adaptation of the Ken Kesey novel, Cuckoo's swept the 1976 Academy Awards, earning five wins -- including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Adapted Screenplay. Only two other movies in history can make that claim: [It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs.

Fast Facts:

1. Released: November 17, 1975
2. Ranks 20th on AFI's "100 Years...100 Movies"
3. Jack Nicholson's first Oscar win
4. The title is derived from an American children's folk rhyme
5. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress

The story line follows a criminal convicted of rape, Randle McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson), into a mental hospital. The conflict between McMurphy and the authoritarian nurse "warden" of the mental ward becomes the central struggle of the film. While gaining the trust of the other patients, McMurphy plans an escape. The plot backfires and one inmate commits suicide, while others suffer punishment of electro-shock therapy. In the end McMurphy is euthanized by one of the patients he befriended after he realized McMurphy was the victim of a lobotomy procedure.