Motion Picture Evaluation - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [Outline]

Write a two-page (double-spaced, blah blah) essay (print and bring to class on “movie day”)

Briefly describe the film, but concentrate on reviewing the movie from the perspective of a medical history student. Your review should directly answer the following questions: is the film worthwhile for medical history students? Assess the time that the film was made. A film produced at the height of the “Golden Age” might have a very different tone than one produced since the 1960s. You may want to address what the film gets “right” from the perspective of factual accuracy. What dramatic license does the film take and do the creative aspects of the film in any way make the film a “truer” depiction of the medical historical themes that interested you?

Thesis: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a film that depicts the push back against mental health wards that institutionalize those mentally ill.

      I.         Introduction

A.     Film released 1975 with decline of medicine’s Golden Age

B.     Problems of mental health system

C.     Deinstitutionalization

D.    No support after – Mental left on the streets

    II.         Fighting against the system

A.     McMurphy outsider coming into system

B.     Challenge authority of Nurse Racheted – Challenging Medical authority

  III.         Failure of System à Order and Control – Keeping freaks away from society

A.     Patient abandonment - Ignoring Chief Bromden

B.     McMurphy’s treatment successes

C.     Keeping the freaks in, permanent stay

D.    Making a healthy person into a dullard

   IV.         Movies to real life

A.     Institutionalization

B.     Staying inside the asylum to hide from the world

Conclusion