cuckoo's nest

Ethnicity

• Chief - Native American
• African american - All of the porters + Staff - Demonised!!!!!
• Caucasian - Majority of the cast is white!

Production context

• Honours
• Won the "Big S" Academy award.
• A best picture
• Best director
• Best actor (Nicholson)
• Best actress ( fletcher)
• Best adapted screenplay

Origins

• Based on a book of the same name by Ken Kesey
• It was made into a broadway show in 1963
• Book banned a lot for content + subject matter
• Used in US schools between 1973-present day
• Parent uproar banned the book from the various schools and on occasion got the teacher who introduced it sacked
• Kirk douglas, who played McMurphy in the Broadway show bought the film rights wanting to repeat the role
• After failure to secure the funding He gave the rights to his son Michael Douglas who successfully got the film made.

Studio System

• The golden age of Hollywood had come to and end in the 60s
• People weren't going to the cinema as much because of:
• - Baby boomers
• - Rise of television
• - Genre Stagnation (too many westerns)
• - Anti-trust laws in 1948
• - Remove Studios monopoly ownership of cinemas - Paramount cinemas
• - Introduce competition
• - The paramount case let independent cinemas open and start screening indie Japanese and European films.
• - Star power was more important with actors being the main pull for audience to see a Hollywood film.

Production

• Made by Fantasy Films (an offshoot of fantasy records)
• - Only ever made 3 films, Between 1972 - 78
• - Payday (1972)
• - The Lord Of The Rings (1978 - Animated)
• - Distributed by united artists
• - All major studios refused to distribute it
• - 20th century fox was interested. Only if it had a happy ending.

Director

• Miloš Forman
• Czech American Director
• - Became US citizen in 1977
• Both parents well killed in a Nazi concentration camp as his father was part of the Anti Nazi underground - distributing banned books.
• His mother died in Auschwitz
• He was one of the major presences in the Czech-Slovak new wave.
• Grew up in oppressive communist regime
• Includes anti establishment messages in his films.
• "The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not"

Czecho-Slovak new wave**

• 1962 - 1972
• Anti communist messages
• dark humour
• Amateur performances
• Long takes
• Unscripted/improvised dialogue

Director - Auteur

• Forman is considered to not have a "signature" Visual style
• Doesn't use experimental or unsettling camera or editing techniques in new Hollywood.
• He used many Classical Hollywood rules of continuity to createa a naturalisitic feeling
• Prefers "method" or naturalistic approach in his performances that reflect "real life".
• Considered Auteur level in relation to his screenplays
• Lots of control over the script.
• Said that writing the script is "half the directing"
• Though he did not write the screenplay for cuckoo's nest.

Jack Nicholson

• Got his break in American New Wave film - Easy Rider
• - (1966, hopper)
• Easy rider was culturally significant with Bonnie + Clyde and The Graduate, Utilising French new wave methods, bringing audiences back to the cinema.
• Began receiving starring roles as anti-heroes becoming a symbol/star of the 1970s counter culture movement
• Prior to Cuckoo's Nest, he was nominated for 4 Oscars.

Production (for the 982nd time)

• Shot on location at the Oregon State Hospital (where the book is set)
• The hospital's superintendent, Dean Brook wanted to change the way people thought about the mentally ill.
• Brooks was given the role Dr Spivey
• Included Patient in the crew
• Brooks assigned a patient to each cast member to shadow.
• The Cast were given a week of rehearsals and observation in the hospital on working in psychiatric wards
• Nicholson and fletcher watched a patient receive electroconvulsive therapy.
• Some of the cast stayed in the wards overnight
• Shot in chronological order (except for fishing trip) to further allow the cast to perform their characters realistically.

Improvisation

• Actors were given the opportunity to improvise, making the film's dialogue appear much more naturalistic.
• Forman encouraged them to develop their characters how they want during "rehearsals"
• foreman would film them when they were "rehearsing" and in between shots without their knowledge which was used.

Multi-Camera setup

• Because of improvisation, it would be impossible to repeat scenes perfectly from different angles.
• Forman occasionally used a 3 camera setup
• The scene could be acted and recorded in full cutting between shots of the same take when editing

Social Change

• Humanisation of the mentally ill
• The original book was written when Kesey worked at Menlo park veterans hospital in the psychiatric ward
• Felt the patients were not insane but that they just didn't fit into societal norms so were locked away.
• The book and film feature a desire to show the mentally ill in a more sympathetic light to change public opinion of those branded as insane.

Social/Historical Context- 1970's

• Conservation (right-wing) President Nixon was elected in 1968
• Because of the anti-establishment beliefs and youth culture of the 60s many Americans (predominantly middle-aged, middle-class white Americans) Doubled down on their conservative beliefs:
• - Believed young people were spoiled "snowflakes"
• - Believed the government were taking them too much
• - Believed the government were helping the poor and non-white ethnicities too much
• Once elected, Nixon
• -Dismantled the welfare state (help for those without work or unable to work)
• - Stopped funding for mental health service (though it was reinstated)
• - Abolished the laws there to help get rid of poverty in america
• - Resistant to anti-segregation and anti-discrimination policies
• -fought enviromental regulations

social/historic cont.

• As the middle-aged middle-class white population doubled down on their conservatism. so did the young and discriminated with their liberal beliefs.
• A culture war between the young and old developed.
• - an (often) non-violent conflict between groups of people with opposite beliefs and values.
• The counter culture of the 60s continued through the 70s
• Vietnam
• Gender equality
• Watergate scandal
• - in 1972 5 men were caught in the watergate building of the demographic national committee (the opposite political party to Nixon) trying to steal documents and bug the phones
• - Nixon told the FBI to stop the investigation into the crime.
• Journalists traced back the money, the 5 were paid by Nixon.
• Phone recordings proved that Nixon resigned the presidency with a full pardon.

Mental health

• Those deemed mentally ill were institutionalised
• Electroconvulsive therapy (where seizures are induced inpatient through electricity to the brain) was used for depression
• Patients bones would break from the high levels of electricity
• Use declined throughout the late 70s and early 80s
• :Legal and still used (though now safer)
• Lobotomies (where the connection in the brain are severed) was used to lessen the symptoms of mental illness at the cost of the patient's personality and intelligence.
• A 12-year-old boy had a lobotomy because his stepmother said he daydreamed and didn't go to bed when asked.
• Estimated 40,000 to 50,000 labotomies in the US
• Still legal but reduced a lot after this film released

Mental health Cont.

• Cuckoo's Nest changed public opinion/raised awareness of the conditions of those institutionalised with mental illness
• helped support antipsychotic drugs to be developed
• helped support for deinstitutionalisation.
• Helped to rehome those in long-stay psychiatric hospitals into more community-focused mental health services
• President Carter created the president's commission on mental health in 1977 to survey and improve services
• Cuckoo's Nest "gave voice, Gave life, to a basic distrust of the way in which psychiatry was being used for society's purpose rather than the purpose of the people who had mental illness" dr frank Pittman

Analysis/relism/music

• Analysis - Motif
• The visual motif of bars and fences
• The audio motif of the sound of the key, and locks
• Creates an atmosphere of oppression and confinement
• Realism
• High key naturalistic lighting - No shadows - glues impression of no escape from observation
• Diegetic sound
• Washed out colour palette
• Linear continuity editing
• Improvisation - naturalistic dialogue
• Music
• Non-diagetic music is used at the beginning and end of the film.
• Music is made with bow saw and wine glass instruments
• Creates an unpleasant, disturbing feeling in the audience.

Scene Analysis

• Lighting -
• White everything
• Discoloured lighting / oppressive
• Sat in a circle, controlled- away from the nurse - violation - stiff movements.
• Sound
• Simple external synchronous diegetic sound
• "fuck the schedule" - "a little change never hurt"
• Nurse very monotone. McMurphy gradually stars swearing.
• Mise en scene
• In the background of McMurphy, shots are caged.
• McMurphy makes a lot of hand gestures vs nurse
• Bare empty space
• The nurse has a comfier chair
• Nurses outfit white vs cream inmates.
• Camera/editing
• High angle first shot - power held
• Medium/eye level locked off shot of the nurse
• Fast cutting between faces
• Zoom out when voting starts
• Equal power at first
• The nurse is closer to camera = power